Not as a fallen stone, Abiding where it hath been flung, Did Christ remain the dead among, But sprang from Hades' deep invisible zone, As the corn springs from where it has been thrown!
Not, as at Nain of yore The young man rose to die again, Did He resume the haunts of men, But closed behind Him Death's reluctant door And triumphed on to live for evermore !
Not, as we spend our days, Subject to sorrows, pains, and fears, Does He persist a Man of tears;
Henceforth He feels no touch of our decays,
But inexpressive joy in all His ways!
Not for Himself alone He fought, and won that glorious life: For us He conquered in the strife, That we might make His victory our own, And rise with Him before the Father's Throne!
i CORINTHIANS xv. 20 477
Thus hath the Saviour brought
Our immortality to light !
0 may He tarry in our sight, That, clinging fast to Him with every thought, We may partake the triumph He has wrought ! *
TJ In a sheltered corner of my Manse garden stands a common red flowering-currant bush. I suppose it has no value at all for anybody but me. But I would not exchange it for all the roses in the Major's fine domain across the road. For year after year it gives me the first news of Spring. Just after the New Year has come in, I begin to watch it, — long before anything else in the garden has stirred. And some still, quiet morning it has its message for me. There is quite a distinct new shade of green on the buds. The wind is bitterly cold, and snow showers are about. Everything else in the garden is cold and dead. But it has risen. And the rest will follow in God's good time.2
2. The resurrection of Christ is the pledge of our resurrection. — We need more than simple proof, however clear, that a resurrec- tion of man is possible. We require a pledge of its certainty before we can taste strong consolation. How can one man's rising give assurance that we shall rise ? Did He not rise from the dead purely in virtue of His power and Godhead ? What more does that prove than that He was able to rise because He was the strong Son of God ? How shall we, who are certainly not strong, be able to follow His example ? Is not the proverb, that what man has done man may do, false on the very face of it ? Who shall say that the doings of the man Christ Jesus are the just criterion of what may be expected from man ? If the Lord had been related to us in the same way as we are related to our fellows, and in no other way, His rising would have proved the possibility of a resurrection, but nothing more. If He had been only our Brother, He could not have been the first-fruits of them that slept, or the pledge of their rising again. But while He was truly our Brother, He was also the Everlasting Father, the representative Head of the race of men.
Luther says : " Our most merciful Father, seeing us to be overwhelmed and oppressed by the curse of the law, and so to be holden under the same that we could never be delivered from it by our own power, sent His holy Son into the world, and laid
1 G. T. S. Farquhar. 2 Archibald Alexander.
478 RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD
upon Him the sins of all men, saying, 'Be Thtu Peter that denier ; Paul that blasphemer and cruel persecutor ; David that adulterer ; that sinner which did eat the apple in Paradise ; that thief which hanged upon the cross; and, briefly, be Thou the person which hath committed the sins of all men. See, then, that Thou pay and satisfy for them.' . . . Now cometh the law, and saith, ' I find Him a sinner, and I see no sins else but on Him ; therefore let Him die upon the cross,' and so he setteth upon Him and killeth Him." The old order changeth, ever giving place to the latest born, and Luther's form of sound words is now obsolete, just as our little systems will have their day and cease to be ; but the immortal soul of vicarious sacrifice is unchanged. It is unalterably and eternally true that Christ, as the Head of His people, and made one with them, was made a curse, was made sin, took upon Himself all their responsibilities, and fully dis- charged them in dying. When He was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father His reappearance on earth, or reconstitu- tion as a man, was nothing less than God's pledge that every liability had been settled, and that a similar resurrection belonged to them who should be found united to the Head that had suffered in their room and stead. The solidarity of our race in ruin is the groundwork of its solidarity in redemption ; in a true sense, all Christ's people rose up with Him on the third day, according to the Scriptures.
Little one, you must not fret That I take your clothes away;