'STAND FAST IN THE FAITH'

New Zealand Tablet, 8 April 1915, Page 17

'STAND FAST IN THE FAITH'

(A Weekly Instruction specially written for the N.Z. > v Tablet by Ghimel.) THE RESURRECTION AND THE LIFE. A new era dawned in men's faith in immortality when the Son of Man stood in the midst of them and said ' I am the Resurrection and the Life he that •believeth in Me, although he be dead, shall live: and every one that livetli and "believeth in Me, shall not die for ever' (St. John xi., 25-26). These words of weighty Divine power and gentle human sympathy were spoken not to some chosen and lofty spirit in an hour of sweet communion with its Creator, but to one of ordinary mould, whose heart had been awed and awakened by the visitation of death, chastened by bereavement. And the life-work of the speaker- overflowed with proofs of the mighty utterance. Whatever He touched received life. He laid His fingers on dead eyes and they saw. He commanded dead ears to open and they heard. He allowed the hem of His garment to touch the fatal disease and life sprang back into the distempered veins. He placed His hands on the lifeless body of the widow's son and it awakened from the sleep of death. Ho went into the grave Himself and, with the power of resurrection, left it empty on the third day. ' / am the Resurrection and the Life.' Our Lord requires belief in His own Person. He draws the eyes of Martha away from one reality to another — from the grim fact of death to the greater fact of His own Person and power and love ; He confronts her with this dilemma— she must pronounce either death or* Himself to be the greater reality' ' I am the Resurrection and the Life.' The words mean something more than a promise of resurrection at the last day. Martha thinks only of that remote time when she and her brother will be reunited. Jesus says, 1 am the Life, here and now. In Me the dead live. Lazarus has indeed passed away from you, but he has not gone to nothingness, for to Me he lives, since I am the Life and in Me the dead live. ' I am the Resurrection.' Christ rose again from the dead, and He has power to raise us up. (1) He is ' the Firstborn out of the dead,' the same as before death, yet mysteriously and loftily transformed. In this highest sense He is the Resurrection. (2) He has also the power, in the fullest sense of the word, to make us live. ' Though he be dead,' He says, 'he shall live.' Of course in a very real sense Christ did die and so do we: the housing of the soul, in His case and in ours, is torn away, the tent taken down. But in another sense death does not touch life, our essential, persona] being; that flows on, an unbroken current, and rises into more perfect fulness. Belief in and union with our Redeemer secures the possession of that eternal life, which victoriously persists through the superficial change which men call death. ' 1 do hear From the revolving year A voice which cries: "All dies Lo, how all dies! 0 seer, And all things too arise : All dies, and all is born; But each resurgent morn, behold, more near the Perfect Morn."' ■ — Francis Thompson. ' I am the Life.' When God raises the soul of man by grace to the level of His own holy life, He will not allow death to destroy His handiwork. The artist does not spend long years in carving a statue out of rare materials, only at the end to break the work to pieces. God does not give His best gifts to men in order to make them His true children, and then refuse to dower them with immortality. Our Redeemer sheds His Blood that men may have spiritual life. Will He lose His own work when it is almost complete?