Waiapu Church Gazette. APRIL, 1916. Jesus Risen.

Waiapu Church Gazette, Volume VI, Issue 10, 1 April 1916, Page 136

Waiapu Church Gazette. APRIL, 1916. Jesus Risen.

Sermon by the Bishop of London. (PreacJied at St. Paul's Cathedral) 11 But God raised Him from the dead."— Acts- xiii. 30. It was only the day before yesterday that I. stood and knelt and prayed m this pulpit for three hours, and, with a great multitude of reverent and silent people, watched our Ivord die. I defended that phrase at the time, and 1 . defend it now. If Christ was, as the Scripture saith, " slain from the foundation of the world," then the Crucifixion is an eternal fact, and He is m the same sense crucified to the end of the world. What happened on a certain spot on the world's surface, and m a 'certain moment of the world's history, affects us to-day m as living a way as it did the people of two thousand years ago. But though only a few hours elapsed between the first Good Friday and the first Kaster Day, what an extraordinary change happened during

those hours m the outlook of the world ! It looked very black on Good Friday evening : the sweetest, purest soul that ever breathed had been hounded to death. All the forces of jealousy and envy reigned triumphant. There had been a promise made upon the Cross about a Paradise to come, but nothing . had happened to prove that that promise consisted of anything but empty words. No wonder that disheartened disciples were wending their way sadly back to their villages ! Farewell our glorious dream ; (farewell our aream of a world redeemed, and of a fount opened full of victorious grace, ,and of ,a life beyond the grave ; farewell, the vision of a living brotherhood, and a Church which should gather m the world, and a certain hope of some day destroying the works of line devil ; farewell the hope of a world m which every pure girl could walk ennobled as a queen, and the boy could grow up m the traditions of a pure and healthy manhood ; farewell the vision of the sweating-den and the gambling-hell, and tne ginpalace, becoming things of the past. •It was, indeed, a Black Friday when Jesus Christ died. And then something happened — something so simple, so obvious, so inevitable, as we see it to be now, but which turned the disciples delirious with surprise — •' God raised Him from the dead." This actual expression occurs sixteen times m the New Testament, and let us be quite clear what it means and what it does not mean. It does not mean merely that God enabled Him to appear after death as a disembodied spirit, for even the Jews of the day believed that men and women survived death. Martha said: "I know that He shall rise again m the resurrection at the last day ! " The, questioners of our Lord on the subject of the woman- who had married seven husbands asked : " In the resurrection^ whose wife will she be ? " No ! it meant one thing, and one thing especial*} 7 — that as our Lord Himself had raised Lazarus from the tomb, body, as well as soul and spirit, so His own sacred Body was not left to moulder either m the tomb or out of it, but was raised from the dead. . That this is the . meaning . is shown by the constant connection m the New Testament between His

'being buried and then rising again — the two are always put together (see Rom. vi. 4 ; i Cor. xv. 4) — ■and also m so many words S. Peter (Acts ii. 31) interprets " tile resurrection of the Christ "as meaning " neither was He left m Hades, nor did His flesh see corruption " ; and S. Paul (Acts xiii. 37) says also : " David saw corruption, but He Whom God raised up saw no corruption." Let no doubts, then, of men who are losing their sense of the power of God, and who, however conscientiously, m their desire to make the faith easier for themselves and others, are whittling away the clear outlines of the Christian Faith, induce you to igive up the full truth of Easter. The whole future of the world was changed by the glorious fact that " God raised Him from the dead," and He stands Himself on Easter Day and cries : "1 am He that liveth and was dead ; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of hell and of death." I know that it is sometimes said and thought that historical facts do not matter ; that so long as you believe that Jesus Christ is victoriously alive to-day, it does not matter whether the tomb was empty or not ; but with all due respect to such believing mystics, I would point out three things : (1) That though we might continue to believe that Jesus Christ is alive m us to-day because we ■have arrived at that belief across the bridge of a dogmatic faith m which we were brought up, yet the next generation have yet to arrive at that beiief, and once let them get accustomed to the thought of a non-miraculous Christ, and they will never reach to any belief about Him except that He was a very good man. * (2) And, m the second place, if you are to believe the story of the New Testament, you must, take the whole story. The story of the New Testament as it stands is, though wonderful, consistent with itself, and to those who believe m the power and love of God, believable ; but once seek to explain it or narrate it m terms which exclude miracles from the New Testament, and the whole story is shattered into a mass of unconnected atoms,

; (3) But is not all this language about being raised from the dead symbolical ? No doubt, symbolical language is used m the Bible and m the Creed, when events are being described which concern the other world, but not, as we have been well reminded lately, .^when the events concern this world. " The central glory of the religion of the Incarnation is that God has revealed Himself distinctly m human experience, m words and acts, some of them miraculous. Thus, we have seen with our eyes, and looked upon*, and our hands hajve handled, Divine things incarnate actually m human experience. , To apply, then, the theory of. sjanfoolism, to explain away the record- of these events within human experience, m which, the purpose of Godhas been manifested m JesXis Christ, is precisely to misapply the theory and to evacuate the Incarnation of its special and unique glory, which is the gjor.y of literal, fact." God, then, did raise Jesus from the dead. Why did it make, such a difference to the world ? (1) In the first place, it showed that God was Master m His own House. There was something more than a plausible case to be made out on Good Friday evening that the devil had taken possession of God's world. It is quite certain that there could have been no Christian Church if matters had been left as they were. Caiaphas had returned triumphant to his palace ; Pilate, uneasy a little, no doubt, m conscience, had got rid of a difficult subject ; and at all points the devil had seemed to win the day ; hell and the forces of hell had appeared to have achieved a great success. But God was biding His time. He often waits to strike, but when He does strike, He strikes home, and He never needs to strike twice. When God raised Jesus from the dead on Easter Day, He shattered for ever every weapon which the devil could produce ; He not merely defeated, but He annihilated the foe. It is true that. the devil can still lie, for he is " a. liar from the beginning " ibut if the children of God refuse to listen to his lies, he is powerless against them. (2) And he is powerless against

them— and this is the second reason why Easter has changed the outlook of the world — because of the wonderful power now liberated for those who are m touch with the risen Christ. I suppose that every Iyent one has, or ought to have, some special realisation of aparticular truth, and the one which has seemed borne m upon me this I,ent has been the vitality of Jesus Christ. ' In words which I have used not once or twice to the clergy at their Quiet Days this year : "We come to our Communions 'too often with a thimbleful of faith, and we go back with a thimbleful of grace " ; whereas' if empty and expectant to OniEy Who is now filled with all power, invested with all authority m heaven and m earth, we should go back filled to the brim with victorious life. " His are the thousand sparkling rills, ->j Which from a thousand fountains burst, And fill with music all the hills." Then He )oan fill us with the water of life. The effect of God raising Christ from the dead is contained m the short but pregnant saying' of S, John: "He that hath the Son, hath; the life." Why not, then, this coming year, with ten times the concentration and twenty, times the faith, keep yourself, by meditation, by prayer, by communion, m touch with .the Conqueror of Easter Day ? and you shall yourself be more than conqueror through Him Who died for you, and rose again. (3) But, once again, look at the effect of God's action on Easter Day upon the world at large. Of course, I admit at once, the result has been slow m coming ; the gambling -hell, the sweating; - den, the gin-palace, are not abolished ; but, for all that, the world is infinitely a ! better world than it was two thousand years ago. Take as an instance the great tract of country we call the Soudan ; visit Meroe, now rising onoe again from) the sand of the desert ; look at the pictures on her sun temple : enemies dragged by the hair of the head; a reign of lust and blood portrayed on every wall. There follows no sort of improvement

for two thousand; years f MaMi succeeds Mahdi, and still a reign, of lust and blood ; but at last the Coniqiueror of Easier has' ""His.; chance m the Soudan^ • F»or ;the , first time, in .its., whole rjus^; tice, freedom^ charity^;^si^e '.-. ■•'' a; chance of reigning ; once regain human life a is thtfiught. preci6|t^ ; once again honour; purity, and ?love are words .jWi'th some meaning ; and if only, we back up effectively our Christian missions, the . kingdom of darkness, will pass away before the kingdom ! of light. And all this because two thousand years ag*> "God raised "Jesus 'from' the dead." •- \ : ; f ■ '-. ■■ ■"■* t. ■ ■/■:*£. (4) Butpfourthly, what an altyso^ lute difference it has made to the mourners of -^the world ; ! There is' 4 one lying- dead at S. James's. Rec- ' tory, Piccadilly, to-day," who" has lived a long life of consistent wit-, ness to the Christian Faith. His last words to me as I knelt by his side to commend, his soul ' to God, were these : "I am longing to igo and be with Christ. I hope they will send a godly man to succeed me." Seldom has a braver soul or more manly Christian passed to his rest than Joseph McCormick. But he is only one of many whose dear ones are mourn-' ing them to-day, and it is to those iriourners of the world to whom the Easter message is life from the grave. " God raised Him from the dead." It goes ringing up through heaven and earth and far above the twinkling stars, like a peal of triumph, and every mourner lifts his head, listens, and drie.s his tears, Go. home, then, dear people, with this great dogmatic statement ringing m your ears ; refuse to be led away by the plausible contention that we do not need dogma. The present vitality of Christendom is produced by two thousand years of dogma— that' is, of belief m a definite fact, repeated m identical terms sixteen times m the New Testament. Quietly but firmly ta&e your stand upon that fact, and, standing on itj you will gain faith m the omnipotence of God, trust m the reality of grace, m the security that, if we do our part, the kingdom of. God will triumph throughout the world, and, above all, a sure and certain hope of resurrection to eternal life.