1 Mandell Creighton, Life and Letters, ii. 168.
472 RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD
mightest drive away from us the power of the enemy ; grant to us, Thy servants, that we may always live in the joys of His Kesurrection." In the Prayer-book of 1549 the same anthem was placed at the head of the short introductory service therein framed before matins for Easter Day. Next to it was added the present third anthem, each being followed by the word " Alleluia " twice after the first, once after the second anthem. Two versicles then followed thus : " Show forth to all nations the glory of God . . . and among all people His wonderful works." Then the follow- ing exquisite collect was added, instead of the collect given above : " 0 God, who for our redemption didst give Thine only Begotten Son to the death of the Cross, and by His glorious Eesurrection hast delivered us from the power of our enemy ; Grant us so to die daily from sin that we may evermore live with Him in the joy of His resurrection, through the same Christ our Lord."
A further change took place in 1552 in the second Prayer-book of Edward VI. The two anthems were shifted from the head of the service for matins to their present place before the Venite. The Alleluias were omitted, and also the special versicles and the collect just quoted. And thus it continued till 1662, when, as we have seen, the first anthem was added. These changes will serve to bring home to our minds the special importance which attaches to these three anthems in their present position in the service. From the date of the Sarum Breviary in 1085 down to the present time, that is, over a period of eight hundred years, one or other or all of them have stood at the head of the Easter service, where, in the old days, until their change of position in 1552, they were originally a sort of Introit, a " processional hymn," which ushered in the worship of the Queen of Festivals. Indeed, the one alteration which we might well wish had not been made is the shifting of that position (so as to make them the mere alternative of the Invitatory Psalm) to a place in the service where their significance is almost lost in the glad festival psalms which immediately follow. Clearly they were intended all along, and are intended still, to strike the keynote of praise for the whole festival, and to sound forth its doctrinal and practical characteristics.
When we study them carefully this impression of their importance and significance is deepened. For all the great essential thoughts of Eastertide are in germ here, and three chief aspects stand prominently forward. They offer us on the morning of the Eesurrection a full and complete Christ, the perfect answer to the needs and desires of fallen man. Our souls require above all things mercy to cover the past only too stained with sin. We find that offered us here through the Cross in
i CORINTHIANS xv. 20 473
Christ our Passover. They yearn for the secret of spiritual power in the present, that sin already forgiven may have now no dominion over us. It is laid bare to us in Christ our life, in and through whom we too, reckoning ourselves "dead indeed unto sin," are " alive unto God " with the power of an endless life within. But our souls have also " keen desire," which finds expression in " earnest prayer and strong " for fellowship in a life beyond the grave, which shall restore to us the losses which the havoc of death has made in this. It is offered us in Christ our first-fruits, our promise, and the first-fruits of them that sleep, the key to an everlasting destiny. Thus, as the first anthem proclaimed the Crucified Christ as the ground of our justification, so the second anthem extols the Eisen Christ as the secret of our sanctification, whilst the third anthem adores the triumphant Christ as the pledge of our glorification. What a magnificent revelation of the Alpha and Omega of Grace, who once, as in the first anthem, " was dead," now " lives for aye," and, better still, " hath the keys of hell and of death " ! A risen Christ in strong and glorious relation to the past, the present, and the future of His redeemed ones, whom He hath " ransomed from the power of the enemy." The Lord for me : the secret of my pardon and my peace. The Lord in me: the secret of my holiness and victory. The Lord with me : the sure pledge of immortality, the "first-fruits" of them that sleep, the sheaf of early ripe corn waved at the Passover Feast in the temple of God as the promise of the
holy harvest-field, Which will all its full abundance At His second coming yield.
A Christ who is the object of adoring faith, " declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead." A Christ who is the motive power of love, who died and rose that " they which live should not hence- forth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again." A Christ who is the inspiration of heavenly hope, " who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him." Thus, if in the first anthem we specially dwell upon the victorious work of Jesus whereby the curse is removed, in the second anthem we are contemplating the ever living person of Christ in whom the blessing is restored, and in the third anthem we are echoing the rapturous music of Heaven, the song of the redeemed before the throne, which tells of the consummated Kingdom of Christ in whom Heaven itself is given