EASTER WITNESS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21468, 17 April 1933, Page 11

EASTER WITNESS

SERVICES IN CHURCHES TRUTH OF RESURRECTION SERMON BY PRIMATE Easter Day services were held in the churches yesterday, large congregations taking part. The Primate, Archbishop Aver ill, preached the morning sermon in St. Matthew's Church, when a party of about 40 members of the St. John Ambulance Brigade, under the commissioner for the Auckland district, Mr. C. J. Tunks, was present. In the evening His Grace preached in St. Mary's Cathedral. "Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed," was the text fiom which the Primate preached in the morning. "We know that the Resurrection is the foundation of Christianity," he said. "In fact, there can be no Christianity without it. It must stand or fall on the truth of the Resurrection, that is, the appearance of Jesus after His death on the Crossafter the burial of His body in the tomb in a body by and through which He convinced His chosen witnesses that what they beheld was really He himself unchanged in the essentials of identity and personality. "It is the fact to which the Church witnesses on this glorious Easter Day '—on the assurance of His first witnesses, including 500 to whom He revealed Himself in Galilee, the assurance of men who were so absolutely convinced that one and all were constrained to bear witness to the truth even unto death. They had nothing material to gain by that witness. They had everything to lose, but death was preferable to a dishonoured conscience. On their authority and on the vital experience of men and women in every age fiince the Resurrection we are witnesses to the greatest of truths. "The attitude toward the great central truth of the Gospel, the Resurrection, is not that of the emotional Saint Mary Magdalene or the impulsive, cautious and doubting Saint Peter, but of the loving and thoughtful Saint John, [ who uses his spiritual understanding and feels his way through outward phenomena to inner truth. "It; is only the most ignorant or the most hopelessly prejudiced who would dare to say that anything is impossible. 'With god all things are possible.' To me the greatest miracle .would have been if Jesus had not risen. To me the Resurrection is not a miracle at all in the ordinary understanding of that word. It is perfectly natural to Him who is the very life of God. "It is childish to talk about anything in which God is concerned being contrary to the laws of nature. How much does man know, after all, about what he calls the laws of nature? Is God, the Law-giver, to be bound by the limits of man's finite understanding? Cannot He operate, when He chooses, outside the limits of man's little mind? "It is good for us to be here on such a day, good to be witnesses for the great truth of the Resurrection, for the truth of the risen Christ—good to renew our allegiance and devotion to Him who died that we might live."