'REMEMBRANCE AND RESURRECTION’

Evening Star, Issue 21749, 18 June 1934, Page 7

'REMEMBRANCE AND RESURRECTION’

SERMON BY DR F. W. NORWOOD _ The greater portion of the service at Knox Church .yesterday morning was conducted by Dr K. W. Norwood, of the City Temple, London, who, in a sermon entitled • Remembrance and Resurrection,’ kook as his text the second epistle ot St. Rani to Timothy, second chapter, eighth verse: “ Remember that Jesus Christ, of the seed of David, was raised from the dead, according to my Gospel.’’ “.Remember Jesus Christ.” These three short words had always fascinated him, declared the preacher. Divorced from their context, they constituted a mere phrase. Yet these words were used by preachers not once, but a hundred times, for they struck right at the heart of the Christian religion. If some exhortation towards rightness in living were required, then we should remember Jesus Christ. If a message of comfort in times of trouble were needed, we. should remember Jesus Christ. If we wished to defend the faith against an attack made upon it or to defend it against negation, remembrance of Jesus Christ was our supreme argument. Or was it a searching analysis that was wanted f In - that case also remembrance of Jesus Christ would shed the light of understanding. These little words embraced the deepest meaning of faith. The phrases of the Bible, the hook that least of all books left itself open to argument, detached themselves with extraordinary ease from the context. It was the phrases from the Bible that were engraved in people’s hearts. The words ‘‘Remember Jesus Christ ” were not exactly what St. Paul had said, but it was the association between remembrance and resurrection which really fascinated him. There was a correspondence between the act of remembering and the mystery of resurrection, for every time a man remembered lie experienced a resurrection. Things that seemed to be dead—things that seemed to be lying in the mausoleum of their breasts—again became alive. The idea of resurrection was, a power in the universe which resisted the fear of death, for it made people feel that death was not the ultimate product of life. All through the universe there was evidence of this mystery of the resurgence of life.

In dealing with everyday thoughts, Dr Norwood said that people should not try to forget their evil memories. The first- essential was to bring them into the sunlight and wrestle with them and conquer them, allowing God to transmute them into something that was botli tender and strong. It might be that a man who had slipped could render a finer service to the Kingdom of God than a man who had never slipped. There were, indeed, some people who had never slipped because their pulse was weak and their timidity paramount. God could not only comfort people in distress, but he could also turn their failures into victory. By bringing their memories into the light of God they would have them irradiated and transmuted into a wonderful power for future guidance. a. here were good memories • which saved them. Every time a man remembered Jesus Christ he was a better man. There was not merely a belief in the historical resurrection. A man mightbelieve in that, aud "yet not- be influenced by it. But there was a realisation of the resurrection not as a thing of the past, but of to-day. , Every now and again in a new way someone discoverer that Christ was now living, and that realisation sent a ilesh flood of life into the world Good thoughts aud impulses came like sunshine from the reality of that experience.