6. This, then, is clearly and unmistakably the Biblical teaching of the resurrection. It is in accordance with law. It is in the Divine order of the creation. Why should it seem otherwise to us ? Why should we regard it as a thing incredible that God should raise the dead ? Partly because in our pagan philosophies we have exaggerated the place and importance of death in the world ; partly, also, because we have fallen into gross and carnal imaginations of the resurrection and eternal life, which would be violations of natural law most difficult to conceive. But, planting the standard of our faith firmly upon this high Biblical doctrine of the resurrection as the final fulfilment of the law of life, let us survey the field of nature and see whether we have learned anything to make it a thing incredible that God should raise the dead.
7. Our Lord's own resurrection is set forth as an event which could not possibly have failed to occur. We say Jesus' resurrection was a miracle, that is, contrary to what might have been expected — a great exception to the law of death. But that is not the way the Scriptures put it. They say, "Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God . . . whom God raised up, having loosed the pangs of death: because it was not possible that he should be holden of it." "Moreover my flesh also shall dwell in hope: because thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades, neither wilt thou give thy Holy One to see corruption." It would be impossible for death to hold a principle of life like the Spirit of that Man of Nazareth. It would be a violation of all law should the Holy One be given over to corruption. There is something inherently inconceivable and impossible in such a thought. How can Holiness see corruption? how can life itself be given over to death? Impossible ! It would have been a miracle, had Jesus not risen
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from the dead. It would have been a violation of the inmost principle of the creation, had the mere dust of this earth held Him as its own for ever. It would have been a miracle without reason, a miracle not against the ordinary course of nature merely, but against God, — the living God, — had He not risen from the dead, the first-fruits of this power and order of Divine life in the creation.
If Dean Bradley, in his Easter Day sermon at Westminster Abbey, put his finger on the very centre of the contrast between ancient and modern feeling concerning Easter, when he said that while it was the crucifixion of Christ that was to "the Jews a stumbling-block and to the Greeks foolishness" in the great day when Christianity first came into the world, it is no longer the Crucifixion but the Eesurrection — which to both Jews and Greeks, though a great marvel, was a marvel which attracted rather than repelled them — that seems to modern pride and scepticism a stumbling-block and foolishness. We feel no diffi- culty where the early believers felt most difficulty, in accepting the tremendous humiliation and sorrow and shame of the cross. On the contrary, as Dean Bradley told his hearers, the story of the Man of Sorrows is wholly credited by the sceptical world of to-day, and is accepted even with eager reverence and gratitude. It is the suffering, the forgiveness, the resignation, the peace, the calm, the fortitude, the sympathy, the " Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children," the " Father, forgive them ; for they know not what they do," the " Peace I leave with you ; my peace I give unto you ; not as the world giveth, give I unto you — let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid," in which we all believe — even sceptics and those who are more than sceptics, who assert positively that "miracles do not happen." The shame does not humiliate us; we can see through it to the infinitely greater glory behind; whereas the Jews found it a sore stumbling-block to their pride of race, and the Greeks looked down upon it as radically incon- sistent with that intellectual caste to which they ascribed the sole possession of " the good and beautiful " in all its perfection. To them the asserted resurrection seemed that which alone gave a glimmer of probability to the bold assertion that God had manifested Himself in human nature only to die upon the cross, and submit to the jeers and scoffs of Jewish and Roman ridicule. To us there seems something intrinsically convincing in the assertion that this great death was died, that that majestic calm and that magnanimous sympathy prevailed even over the torture
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of the cross ; we come to our difficulties only when we come to the assertion that He who died that supernatural death really lived again to be recognized by those who saw Him die and heard Him foretell their own discomfiture and dispersion. The early disciples found it all but impossible to believe that a Divine nature could go through physical and moral humiliation. Our difficulty is not in the least in believing in that which is Divine enough to overcome any combination, however overwhelming, of physical and moral humiliation. What we find difficulty in believing is, that that which is morally and spiritually super- natural involves even any power at all of controlling or over- ruling what we suppose to be the fixed necessities of physical law. Our minds are jaded and hag-ridden, as it were, by the physical fatalities of modern science; and yet modern science itself might, if we only used our eyes, warn us of the extra- ordinary blunder we are making in thus depreciating the true power of mind over matter.1