And herein is it to be your plan, my brethren, and your joy, not to make this sanctuary the resort of wealth and of fashion, but rather of humble suppliants, who by their prayers may divert all the wealth and fashion of the world into the service of your Lord; not to make this temple the resting-place of hearers who shall idly listen to the words of an orator, but a temple of earnest coworkers with Christ--thinking of Him, speaking of Him, loving Him first, and last, and midst, and without end. As you come to this house of God on the Sabbath, as you go from it, as your week-day recollections gather around it, may you renew and confirm your plan to know your Redeemer, and not only to shut yourselves up to the supreme love of nothing except Christ, but also--His grace will be sufficient for you--to worship and serve Christ in the central relation of Him crucified. Knowing Him alone, He will sustain you as fully as if He knew you alone. He will come to you in this temple as frequently as if He had no other servants to befriend. He will listen to your prayers as intently as if no supplications came up to Him from other altars, and He will intercede for you as entirely as if He interceded in behalf of no one else; for remember, that when He hung upon the cross, He thought of you, and died for you, just as fully as if He had been determined to think of no one, and to die for no one, save you, whom He now calls to the solemn service of consecrating your own souls, and your "holy and beautiful house" to the glory of Jesus Christ and Him crucified. SIMPSON THE RESURRECTION OF OUR LORD BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE MATTHEW SIMPSON, Methodist Episcopal Bishop, was born at Cadiz, Ohio, in 1810. He early distinguished himself as an orator, his style being that of spontaneous unpremeditated eloquence, in which he carried his congregation to heights of spiritual fervor and enthusiasm. He visited Europe in 1878 as delegate to the World's Evangelical Alliance in Berlin, which served to widen his reputation as a public speaker. He officiated at the funeral of Abraham Lincoln at Springfield, Illinois. His "Lectures on Preaching" delivered before the divinity students at Yale have been widely read. He died in 1884. SIMPSON 1810-1884 THE RESURRECTION OF OUR LORD _But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept._--1 Cor. xv., 20. A little more than eighteen hundred years ago, as the light of the morning was breaking around the walls of Jerusalem, there was a guard placed about a sepulcher in a small garden near the walls of the city. They were guarding a grave. Some strange scenes had occurred on the Friday before. While a man whom they had taken from the hills of Galilee and around the little lake of Capernaum had been hanging on the cross crucified as a malefactor, strange signs appeared in the heavens, and on the earth and in the temple.