THE MEANING OF THE RESURRECTION.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 78, 2 April 1932, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE MEANING OF THE RESURRECTION.

(By S.)

There ara different ways in which we can think of the resurrection of Christ. We can think of it as the supreme proof that God accepted His sacrifice of Himself for our sins and for the sine of the world. We can think of it as the supreme proof that He is Lord over physical decay and death. And we can think of it as St. Paul did when he dictated the fifteenth chapter of Ist Corinthians. In that wonderful chapter he speaks of it as "the first fruits of them that slept." That is how many people have been thinking of it these past days. The phrase is Jewish. It does not mean, as we are apt to suppose, that the resurrection of Christ is the proof to us that as the grass we crop grows again, so the body that the sickle of death lays low will rise again. The Jews dedicated the first fruits of harvest to God in token of their acknowledgment that the harvest was His—was His gift to them, and what Paul meant was that the resurrection of Christ is God's assurance to us that the dead are His, that they do not belong to the grave, but to Him, and that He will not leave those who trust Him under the power of death. Is. it not an assurance that should help us to think of our dead with reverence and hope, and that should help us to lift our mind from the thought of the grave to the thought of God? But it means more. It means that we must all die in our sinful human nature and human body some day, as the butterfly that skims the atmosphere had to die one day in its unattractive form as a crawling worm. We die, indeed, from the moment we begin to live. What are weariness, and sleep, sickness and infirmity, but indications of death? Is there one of us who is ever fully alive? * In sober truth we are in life in the midst of death. It also means that as Christ died in order that He might live in newness of life, we, too, must die in order that we may live in newness of life, and that if we believe in Him the newness of life will be like His. That is what Pascal meant when lie said, "We are not yet alive, but we hope one day to be alive." And that is what our Lord meant when He told the disciples, "Then shall the righteous sliine forth as the stars in the kingdom of their Father." It means this further that we should think of Christ's restoration to life not only as an historical incident, but also as a sacrament, as a call to use to die daily to what is sinful, and to grow daily in moral strength. That was what St. Paul had in his mind when he spoke to the Colossians about being risen with Christ —risen while they were still living . . And he told them the secret of spiritual resurrection; it was to centre their mind for a little each day on Christ and the hereafter. That was the inspiration they needed, and that is the inspiration we all need amidst the _ emergencies _ and troubles and temptations of ordinary every day life. It is the thought and the vision of home that makes the soldier brave mid the horribleness and eordidness of war, and it is the thought and the vision of the heart's true home that gives us peace and self mastery in the battle of life.

NOTES IN PASSING.

The churches at Home, like the churches in New Zealand, are suffering severely from financial difficulties. For lack of money the Press and publicity department of the Forward Movement of the Church of Scotland has had to close down.

Humility consists not so much in thinkino- meanly of one's self, as in feeling dependence on a higher power for' success. There is no better time for the exercise of humility than when we succeed. —Mary Lyon.

"The only complete contribution that we simplo folk can make in these difficult but nftt desperate days," writes Dr. H. R. L. Sheppard in "St Martin's Review," "is the bettering and cleansing of ourselves for the service of our God and world."

How many Church people know that some of the hymns they sing in church are the work of Unitarians? Here are two that are popular in our churches: "Nearer My God to Thee," and "Lord of all Being, thronged afar."

An indication of the prominence manynewspapers at Home are giving to matters of religion is seen in one newspaper printing in each issue the first verse of a popular hymn and adding a brief note regai'ding the author, and the circumstances in which the hymn was composed.

Dr. Garvie says: "The ground of our forgiveness is not in ourselves (in our works or merits) hut in God Himself . . . We must beware in using such a phrase as 'for Christ's sake' ... as though Christ did something which induced God to he gracious. It is God in Christ Who redeems and reconciles man to Himself because He is eternal love and grace which is love in action and passion for the unworthy."

An English preacher, speaking recently at a conference of Christian workers, Baid we were dealing to-day with a generation of people that did not know their Bible and were quite ignorant of what the Church stood for. It knew nothing about personal religion. Many of the terms' we used had no meaning for the young generation. People were doing everything but obeying and following Jesus.

"Do you notice the peculiar way I walk?" said John Stuart Blackie to a young lady. She admitted she had noticed his characteristic style. "Do you know what causes it?" asked the whimsical scholar. When the astonished lady admitted she did not, the professor replied with emphatic frankness: "It is conceit—sheer conceit." Commenting on this, a writer says when all allowances are made for temperament or idiosyncrasy, certain manifestations of selfesteem are merely forms of impudence. Such was the opinion of Plutarch. He will only allow people to praise themselves if hy this they can repel calumny and accusation.

At the recent rally in the Albert Hall, London, addressed by the Prince of Wales, and attended by over 7000 representatives of all types of youth, a new poem by Mr. Rudyard Kipling was 6ung and heartily applauded. One verse recounts the good that flows to the man who is kindly of heart. The man who is not, receives this warning:

His eye shall be blind to God's glory above liim, His ear shall be deaf to earth's laughter around, His friends and his club and Ills dog shall not love him, And his widow shall skip whsn he goes underground.