The Pulpit Commentary — Acts — Volume 2 — Section 218

I. Tm!: HOPE HERE INTENDED. The expression may mean simply "the hope of Israel" (eh. xxvi. 6-8; xxviii. 20). But if it do mean this, it is instanced ns having for its chief implication the revelation of immortality in and by Jesus. Or it may mean more specifically Israel's "hope in and for the resurrectiou of the deltd," though for obvious reasons Paul omits the word " Israel .._ wider resurrection thl\n that of 'Israel merely being deep in his heart (eh. xxiv. 15). The exl?ression says" the hope," either absolutely or "of the dead." The ambiguity of expression is immaterial, because there is none of meaning. And grand indeed are the suggestions that come of the language employed. 1. " The hope" must be universal. The laborious and far-fotchod excep- tions that possibly might be produced would be infinitely insignificant, and might be accounted for in, perhaps, every case by moral reasons, though the most disastrous. 2. " The hope• must be of the very chiefcst that can stir human hearts. 3. "The hope" carries in it the highest argument and testimony of the Creator of those hearts. 4. "The hope" must determine the great leading tracks of our thoughts of God and thoughts toward him. If he is only our God up to the grave, the greatest feeders of human regard, awe, devotion, are ruthlessly cut off at one stroke. Wonder because of him, fear toward him, love for him, wither away rootless and profitless. According as we find ground for this hope or were to fail to find it, our notions of God must be trustful or doubting, loving or callous, aspiring or ruinously baffled, and our own life rearing itself to air and light or cruelly beaten down to earth. Yes, the hope of universal man, his deepest hope, his last hope, his highest kind of hope, his most governing hope, is the hope that those called "the dead" are not dead, but that they " all live." For "the dead" the living hope this, and they hope it for themselves, ere they, too, shall be numbered among that number. Upon the basis of this hope rises the superstructure as of our leading views of God, of our forecasts of self. IL THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD HERE SPOKEN OF, The resurrection of the dead (in the sense of the resurrection in any tenable philosophical sense of the body) is, beyond doubt, the specific revelation of Christianity. The Christian revelation of the resurrection of the body avails: 1. To guie.e human thoughts as to the method of the transition from mortality to immortality. Whatever may be the facts as to the disembodied and intermediate state, the resurrection of the body sufficiently fius for us the form of the immortal life, and gives definiteness to our conception of it. 2. 'rhis revealed method evidently guarantees the maintenance of individuality in the immortal life. 3. For quite similar reason it postulates the continuous identity of the individual. 4. It surely infers the responsibility of the individual No one for one moment contends for hnman responsibility or for human irresponsibility in this poor lower life. That those who have known it for the years of life's brief span shonld ignore it, at the first moment when its commanding character would receive forcible illustration, is incredible. 5. The resurrection of the dead indefinitely enlarges the entire character of man. Were the trnth now conceivably subtracted from the wealth of truth which is our present possession, it would condemn us to a poverty of distressing misery. No more appalling type of the truncat.ed could be found the world a.round. When Paul introduced wit.h powerful voice and distinctest of utterance this twofold expression of the grandest and the most fundamental fact of human nature, he threw, doubtless, the apple of discord into the midst of Pharisees and Sadducees, and he did it designedly. But he was gaining a. hearing for the truth that carries humanity's highest outlook in it, He was making a fresh appeal to all that is greatest and deepest in human nature, He was reminding a hardened multitude of what should most raiso them and endear the Christ who came from God to them. And he was preaching to them, not what could be construed into "a hard saying,• but what wa.s fi ttcd to be peronnial inspiration. Let us 110e to it that it may be to us what it should have been, but was not, to them.-B. Ver. ll.-77ie sympathizing and mindful Master. We may justly suppose that, after the life, activity, and intense excitement of that day, a reaction set in for Paul with the time of darkness and enforced re&t. Those who toil for their Lord all day will not find themselves forgotten in their night of darkness, of uncertainty, of trouble. The comfort of Jesus is in this night brought to Paul. And the wa1 in which it was brought to him Jllust llav~ ~n mOJt grateful. '.['4a.t comfort offereq its(llf in sev~~l ~  ClB, XXIII, 1-35.] THE ACTS or THE APOSTLE& 225