2 TIMOTHY I. lo 177
see in them the seeds of a great tree; and we take courage to believe that, though it be with us still only the day of small things, we are already in certain experiences within the eternal order.
In the risen Christ, as the evangelists have drawn the portraiture with the profound unconsciousness which makes their inspiration a reality to the student, we can faintly under- stand how the corruptible puts on incorruption ; and how the mortal puts on immortality without ceasing to be what it has been hitherto. There is no anxiety on their part to reconcile the sharp contrasts which they record ; there is no inclination to emphasize or to set forth the truths which they indicate, but when we compare and combine and ponder the- scattered details of their narrative, every fragment is found to grow significant. Now in this trait and now in that, Christ is revealed wholly changed and wholly the same. In Him, the Eepresentative of humanity, we see that the perfection of earthly life is un- diminished by death, we see that what seems to be dissolution is only transfiguration ; we see that all that belongs to the essence of manhood can exist under new conditions ; we see that whatever be the unknown glories and the unimaginable endowments of the after life, nothing is cast off which rightly claims our affection and our reverence in this.
^ As to the evidential value of the Eesurrection with regard to immortality, the relation here is, indeed, more vital than at first appears. The Christian hope is not merely that of an "im- mortality of the soul," nor is " eternal life " simply the indefinite prolongation of existence in a future state of being. Keeping, however, at present to the general question of the possibility and reality of a life beyond the grave, it is to be asked what bearing the Eesurrection of Jesus has as evidence on this. None what- ever, a writer like Professor Lake will reply, for the physical Eesurrection is an incredibility, and can prove nothing. Appari- tional manifestations are possible, but even these can only be admitted if, first of all, proof is given of the survival of the soul by the help of such phenomena as the Society for Psychical Eesearch furnishes. Others base on the natural grounds for belief in a future life supplied by the constitution of the human soul, eked out, in the case of recent able writers, by appeal to the same class of psychical phenomena. On a more spiritual plane, Herrmann and Harnack would argue that immortality is given as
I THESS.-HEB. — 12
178 LIFE AND IMMORTALITY
a " thought of faith " in the direct contemplation of Christ's life in God. A soul of such purity, elevation, and devotion to the Father as was Christ's cannot be thought of as extinguished in death.
Christ's earthly history does not end as an optimistic faith would expect. Eather, it closes in seeming defeat and disaster. The forces of evil — the powers of dissolution that devour on every side — seem to have prevailed over Him also. Is this the last word? If so, how shall faith support itself? "We hoped that it was he which should redeem Israel." Is not the darkness deeper than before when even He seems to go down in the struggle ? Will it be doubted that, as for the first disciples, so for myriads since, the Resurrection has dispelled these doubts, and given them an assurance which nothing can overthrow that death is conquered and that, because Jesus lives, they shall live also ? Jesus, who came from God and went to God, has shed a flood of light into that unseen world which has vanquished its terrors, and made it the bright home of every spiritual and eternal hope. It is open to any one to reject this consolation, grounded in sure historical fact, or to prefer to it the starlight — if even such it can be named — of dubious psychical phenomena. But will it be denied that for those who, on what they judge the best of grounds, believe the resurrection, there is opened up a " sure and certain hope" of immortality which nothing else in time can give ? ^
(5) By imparting new life to the believer. — The words spoken to Martha were spoken for us : " Whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall never die." The resurrection life is begun already in the believer. A moral and spiritual resurrection has taken place — a rising out of the death of sin into the life of righteousness — which is the pledge of the bodily resurrection. " If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, he that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall quicken also your mortal bodies through his Spirit that dwelleth in you." In this case, therefore, death is "abolished." The physical death must come in the order of nature ; but it is a beginning rather than an ending, a process of life rather than of death. It is the folding up of the shifting tent that we may take up our abode in the enduring mansion. It is the doffing of the beggar's rags that we may don the princely robes. It