SUNDAY READING.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 353, 2 April 1910, Page 9

SUNDAY READING.

" THE RESURRECTION OF OUR LORD

FROM THE DEAD."

(By Sir W. Robertson Nicoll)

When Strauss' first life oi Christ was published, an eminent erit.'s said that his theories would be shattered against such facts as the resurrection of our Lord and the conversion of St. Paul. <3o it has turned out In dealing with the resurrection of Clrrist we shall first of all state the meaning of the fact, next adduce its evidence*, and in conclusion examine the expku ations of its deniers. Students will see that in criticising the explanations, we make much use of Strauss' first "Life of Jesus." We do so partly because no one can say that Strauss was prejudiced on the side of orthodoxy, but also because he of all those who have measured swords with Christ wis the strongest, the ablest, the most candid, the most loyal to the facts as he conceived them. No other sceptical critic can lay claim to a more piercing genius, to a genius which, like a flash, often lightens up in an instant the tangled underwood of thought, and attains its goal at once (1) When Jesus died the crucified body was laid in the grave. On the third day the grave was left erepty —the Redeemer had risen to a new life. .He was not called back to the life of mortality. Bis body was transfigured • into fresh lustre and beauty. It wai the glorified body of the Resurrection. It was the same body that had been committed to the tomb and yet it was not the same, for it was revivified and transformed and past the dominion of death for ever. In this body He manifested' Himself to His disciples, and as His body could not live to die, He took leava of the world in the quiet triumph of the Ascension. The Resurrection and the Ascension go together. Christ's body, if it had remained, would have been vith us still; but it was expedient for us that He should go away, and a c'.cud received Him from the sight of the taithful. The two points on which fa"tli must fasten are the empty grave and the ascension of the glorified body into the heavens. To all these there is the unbroken testimony of the New Testament. There is a strange and not quite honest effort on the part of some in these days to accept the Resurrection of Christ in words while actually denying it. But to talk of the resurrection of the spirit is preposterous. The spirit does not die and therefore cannot rise. WLat is meant bv those who hold such options is that the life of Jesus is, like, any other life, persistent beyond death! But that has nothing to do with the resurrection of the New Testament, and r/.thin? to do with resurrection of any Innd. The one resurrection of which the New Testament knows, the one resurrection that allows to lansruasre anr meaning is the resurrection of the bodv. the resurrection which leaves the grave empty.

(II.) The resurrection of our Lord from the dead is in a sense the greatest «f miracles, and needs to be proved by clear evidence, what happened when Jesus died on' the tree? Those who slew Him had no doubt He had been defeated, stricken into powerless silence. What did His disciples think? Did they understand "that His death' did not end all, that it was in itsel r ,r triumph to be followed by the triumph.' of His resurrection. His ascension. His session of the Eternal Throne? On the contrary, they were weighed down: discomfort, overborne by thoughts of coom, defeat and death. They were stupefied and silent mourners while Re—the Sword of the Spirit—was quiet in the holv grave. Nothing is mor,-. certain than the hopelessness of the disciples, and it is that which gives such evtraordinary weight to their witness The stories of the' Gospel cannot here *>«• examined in detail, but no render can f?il to see tke moods of the disciples-the bewilderment, the despair, the dnwn.ng bliss, the half-believing rapture ending at last in an undying joy. and coining from the sober certaintv that the f.ord was risen indeed, and that the whole face of life and death had been chanirui. Now the question is. what took p'ace between the deep depression nt the death of Jesus and the triumph that followed? What was it that made Ihe sheep so ranic-stricken on Good Fiiday, bold as lions on the day of. Pentecost? The answer of the Gospels is. that the Resurrection had happened. How can we account for the wave of strength and hope that suddenly swept over the deeply despondent disciples, and made them the conquerors of the world? Between the blank despair and the exultant gladness are we to place a delusion s lie? No; between th:h' we place the risen Lord, and nothing but the fact of His triumph will explain hew those who had been trying in vain to deaden the agonv of disappointment were suddenly filled" with life and might and courage, realising that when their Master made the step from old things to new, fie made it for all His bMhien. Again, we have the uncontradicted testimony of St. Paul, a testimony which appears the more weighty the longer it is studied- we find the witness m the first extant New Testament writing the first epistle trf the Thessalonwiis: "Ye turned to God from idols to yive the living and true God and to wtit for His Son from Heaven whom He raided from the dead even Jesus. If w* believe that Jesus died and rose again tven so them also that are fallen asleep in Jesus will God bring with Him." Tfcey are right ,who say that the Apostle is appealing to the' unquestioned ani universal belief of Christians. In I forinthians, XV., 5-7, St. Paul with taim precision enumerates five appearames of the Lord after His resurrection. He also reminds the Corinthians of what he delivered to them first of all, throwing back the date of his evidence sorme years, probably from the year 55 t 0 51. It is to be noted that, though some in the apostolic age had doubts of th> resurrection of Christians, there were apparently none as to the resurrection of Christ St. Paul made his appeal to a fact which admitted of no denial. He was speaking in the presence of contemporaries who might still be cross-qveslioned, with whom he had come into the closest relationship, who had the n.fans, and in some cases the will, to criticise him if they saw cause. Further, the apostle claims to have seen the Lord Himself. *Have not I seen Jesus Christ our Lord? Last of all He was seen of me also as one born out of due time." He has been talking of the other Apo-i,es as haymg seen the risen Lord, and ,-.r.ksh,s sight with theirs. In other words, St. Paul s was not a subjective vision: it was an actual beholding with the bodily eyes. There was no doubt a my?uc element m St Paul a perpetual side door for him into the' unseen, a pow.-r of detaching himself from all sensible surroundings But his claim to be an Ayostle was not based on inner secrets of his history,

but on the fact that ho Had seen the Lord, and his whole life Lad been revolutionised. This is not the place to dwell on St. Paul's rich expositions and applications of the fact of the Resurrection. They all start >'rom his recognition of Christ as one wlio had broken through the immemorial! law and rule of death. Apart from the Resurrection, St. Paul knew of no Christianity. Baur says the Apostle regards the Resurrection of Jesus as the principal doctrine of the Christian faith. 'lf Christ be not risen," said the Appf+ie, "then is our preaching vain and jour faith is also vain." We are dealing, it will he noticed, with an universal conviction which Strauss himself calls "a world-wide deception."

(III.) Is it possible U, explain these facts away? Baur decline the attempt. He assumed the faith in the Resurrection as indisputable, a.id declined to attempt the tracing of its origin. It is fair to say with Dr. Biuce that his "reserve may have been due in part to prudential considerations, but it was due also to a vivid sense of the unsatisfactoriness of all past attempts to account for the belief in Christ's rising from the dead on natuj alistie principles." We need not waste time on the hypothesis that the who> matter was a fraudulent conspiracy oo the part of Jesus or His disciples or both combined. Christianity is not founded on rottenness. What explanation does such a supposition give of the bounding and thrilling joy which was the mood of the Church? Men of all schools in modern times would be ashamed to identify themselves with so ba?a a suggestion. . . . The more the eriufnee is examined, the more clearly in the crowning miracle of Christianity established; and nowadays the tendency en the part of deniers is to attempt no explanation at all, 'hut take refuge in the general assertion of the impossibility of the supernatural. But, as has wpH been said, it is better to believe in th<! supernatural than to believe in the ridiculous, and that is what it comes to. The Resurrection gives us the rise? Lord and His past and present contac' with the souls of men. Meanwhile the words of Pressense deserve to be ponuered: "The empty tomb of Christ Wa been the cradle of the Church, and if in this foundation of her faith the Church has been mistaken she must nee?* lav herself down by the side of the mortal remains T say not of a man but o' a religion."