(4) The resurrection was the convincing proof that Christ's words were true, and that He was what He had claimed to be. — He
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Himself had on more occasions than one hinted that such proof was to be given. " Destroy this temple," He said, " and in three days I will raise it up." The sign which was to be given, not- withstanding His habitual refusal to yield to the Jewish craving for miracle, was the sign of the prophet Jonah. As he had been thrown out and lost for three days and nights, but had thereby only been forwarded in his mission, so our Lord was to be thrown out as endangering the ship, but was to rise again to fuller and more perfect efficiency. In order that His claim to be the Messiah might be understood, it was necessary that He should die ; but in order that it might be believed, it was needful that He should rise.
(5) The resurrection of Christ holds a fundamental place in the Christian creed, because by it there is disclosed a real and close connection between this world and the unseen, eternal world.— There is no need now of argument to prove a life beyond ; here is one who is in it For the resurrection of Christ was not a return to this life, to its wants, to its limitations, to its inevitable close ; it was a resurrection to a life for ever beyond death. Neither was it a discarding of humanity on Christ's part, a cessation of His acceptance of human conditions, a rising to some kind of existence to which man has no access. fOn the contrary, it was because He continued truly human that in human body and with human soul He rose to veritable human life beyond the grave} If Jesus rose from the dead, then the world into which He is gone is a real world, in which men can live more fully than they live here. If He rose from the dead, then there is an unseen Spirit mightier than the strongest material powers, a God who is seeking to bring us out of all evil into an eternally happy condition. Quite reasonably is death invested with a certain majesty, if not terror, as the mightiest of physical things. There may be greater evils ; but they do not affect all men but only some, or they debar men from certain enjoyments and a certain kind of life but not from all. But death shuts men out from everything with which they have here to do, and launches them into a condition of which they know absolutely nothing. Any one who conquers death and scatters its mystery, who shows in his own person that it is innocuous, and that it actually betters our condition, brings us light that reaches us from no other
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quarter. And He who shows this superiority over death in virtue of a moral superiority, and uses it for the furtherance of the highest spiritual ends, shows a command over the whole affairs of men which makes it easy to believe He can guide us into a condition like His own. As St. Peter affirms, it is by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead we are begotten again unto a lively hope.
TI There is a beautiful sonnet of Petrarch, who sees Laura in heaven amongst the angels ; she walks amongst them, but from time to time turns her head and looks behind and seems to be waiting for him :
Wherefore I raise to heaven my heart and mind Because I hear her bid me only haste.1
^[ The history of the three anthems which are chosen in place of the Venite for matins on Easter morning (1. Cor. v. 7, 8 ; Eom. vi. 9-11 ; 1. Cor. xv. 20-22) well illustrates the care taken by the compilers of the Prayer-book to make it reflect the great doctrinal lessons of the sacred year. They do not stand to-day in their original form, but there can be no question of the greater fitness and beauty of the present arrangement. The first anthem was inserted last, and did not appear till 1662, at the last revision of the Prayer-book at the Savoy Conference. But, as an Easter anthem, it was already very old, for part of it had appeared as such in the Antiphonary of Gregory the Great. It had also been read in the Epistle for the second communion on Easter Day in 1549, in the first Prayer-book of Edward vi., when provision was made for a Collect, Epistle, and Gospel at two communions. These were ordered to be used as the special features for Easter Tuesday and for the first Sunday after Easter, though this arrangement was abolished in the second Prayer-book of Edward vi. in 1552.
The second anthem is much older. It formed a part of a short service which was prefixed in the Sarum Breviary to the ordinary matins as a special feature for Easter Day. The exact words used were as follows : " Christ rising again from the dead dieth no more ; death hath no more dominion over Him. For in that He liveth He liveth unto God." And this had been followed by the refrain, " Alleluia, Alleluia." In the Sarum Breviary the versicles and response followed: "The Lord rose from the sepulchre : who for us hung upon the tree. Alleluia." To these succeeded the following beautiful collect : " 0 God, who for us didst suffer Thy Son to endure the yoke of the Cross, that Thou