of our blessed Saviour’s Resurrection. All Friday night, Saturday, and
Saturday night, His body lay in the grave; His soul was—where we cannot
tell. St. Peter tells us that He went and preached to the spirits in
prison—the sinners of the old world, who are kept in the place of
departed souls—most likely in the depths of the earth, in the great
fire-kingdom, which boils and flames miles below our feet, and breaks out
here and there through the earth’s solid crust in burning mountains and
streams of fire. There some say—and the Bible seems to say—sinful souls
are kept in chains until the judgment-day; and thither they say Christ
went to preach—no doubt to save some of those sinful souls who had never
heard of Him. However this may be, for those two nights and day there
was no sign, no stir in the grave where Christ was laid. His body seemed
dead—the stone lay still over the mouth of the tomb where Joseph and
Nicodemus laid him; the seal which Pilate had put on it was unbroken; the
soldiers watched and watched, but no one stirred; the priests and
Pharisees were keeping their sham Passover, thinking, no doubt, that they
were well rid of Christ and of His rebukes for ever.
But early on the Sunday morn—this day, as it might be—in the grey dawn of
morning there came a change—a wondrous change. There was a great
earthquake; the solid ground and rocks were stirred—the angel of the Lord
came down from heaven, and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat
upon it, waiting for the King of glory to arise from His slumber, and go
forth the conqueror of Death.
His countenance was like lightning, and His raiment white as snow; and
for fear of Him those fierce, hard soldiers, who feared neither God nor
man, shook, and became as dead men. And Christ arose and went forth.
How he rose—how he looked when he arose, no man can tell, for no man saw.
Only before the sun was risen came Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary,
and found the stone rolled away, and saw the angels sitting, clothed in
white, who said, “Fear not, for I know that ye seek Jesus, who was
crucified. He is not here, for He is risen. Come, see the place where
the Lord lay.”
What must they have thought, poor, faithful souls, who came, lonely and
broken-hearted, to see the place where _He_, their only hope, was, as
they thought, shut up and lost for ever, to hear that He was risen and
gone? Half terrified, half delighted, they went back with other women
who had come on the same errand, with spices to anoint the blessed body,
and told the apostles. Peter and John ran to the sepulchre, and saw the
linen clothes lie, and the napkin that was about his blessed head,
wrapped together by itself. They then believed. Then first broke on
them the meaning of His old saying, that He must rise from the dead; and
so, wondering and doubting what to do, they went back home.
But Mary—faithful, humble Mary—stood without, by the sepulchre, weeping.
The angels called to her, “Woman, why weepest thou?” “They have taken
away my Lord,” said she; “and I know not where they have laid him.”
Then, in a moment, out of the air, He appeared behind her. His body had
been changed; it was now a glorified, spiritual body, which could appear
and disappear when and how he liked. She turned back, and saw Him
standing, but she knew Him not. A wondrous change had come over Him
since last she saw Him hanging, bleeding, pale, and dying, on the cross
of shame. “Woman,” said He, “why weepest thou?” She, fancying it was
the gardener, said to Him, “Sir, if thou hast borne Him hence, tell me
where thou hast laid Him, and I will take Him away.” Jesus said to her,
“Mary.” At the sound of that beloved voice—His own voice—calling by her
name, her recollection came back to her. She knew Him—knew Him for her
risen Lord; and, falling at His feet, cried out, “My Master!”
So Jesus Christ, the Son of God, rose from the dead!
Now come the questions, _Why_ did Christ rise from the dead?—and _how_
did he rise? And, first, I will say a few words about how he rose from
the dead. And this the Bible will answer for us, as it will every thing
else about the spirit-world. Christ, says the Bible, was put to death in
the flesh; but quickened, that is, brought to life, by the Spirit. Now
what is the Spirit but the Lord and Giver of Life,—life of all sorts—life
to the soul—life to the body—life to the trees and plants around us?
With that Spirit Christ is filled infinitely without measure; it is _His_
Spirit. He is the Prince of Life; and the Spirit which gives life is His
Spirit, proceeding from the Father and the Son. _Therefore_ the gates of
hell could not prevail against Him—_therefore_ the heavy grave-stone
could not hold Him down—_therefore_ His flesh could not see corruption
and decay as other bodies do; not because His body was different from
other bodies in its substance, but because _He_ was filled, body and
soul, with the great Spirit of Life. For this is the great business of
the Spirit of God, in all nature, to bring life out of death—new
generations out of old. What says David? “When Thou, O God, turnest
away Thy face, things die and return again to the dust; when Thou lettest
Thy breath (which is the same as Thy spirit) go forth, they are made, and
Thou renewest the face of the earth.” This is the way that seeds,
instead of rotting and perishing, spring up and become new plants—God
breathes His spirit on them. The seeds must have heat, and damp, and
darkness, and electricity, before they can sprout; but the heat, and
damp, and darkness, do not make them sprout; they want something more to
do that. A philosopher can find out exactly what a seed is made of, and
he might make a seed of the proper materials, and put it in the ground,
and electrify it—but would it grow? Not it. To grow it must have
life—life from the fountain of life—from God’s Spirit. All the
philosophers in the world have never yet been able, among all the things
which they have made, to make a single living thing—and say they never
shall; because, put together all they will, still one thing is
wanting—_life_, which God alone can give. Why do I say this? To shew
you what God’s Spirit is; to put you in mind that it is near you, above
you, and beneath you, about your path in your daily walk. And also, to
explain to you how Christ rose by that Spirit,—how your bodies, if you
claim your share in Christ’s Spirit, may rise by it too.
You can see now, how Christ, being filled with God’s Spirit, rose of
Himself. People had risen from the dead before Christ’s time, but they
had been either raised in answer to the prayers of holy men who had God’s
Spirit, or at some peculiar time when heaven was opened, and God chose to
alter His laws (as we call it) for a moment.
But here was a Man who rose of Himself. He was raised by God, and
therefore He raised Himself, for He was God.
You all know what life and power a man’s own spirit will often give him.
You may have heard of “spirited” men in great danger, or “spirited”
soldiers in battle; when faint, wounded, having suffered enough,
apparently, to kill them twice over, still struggling or fighting on, and
doing the most desperate deeds to the last, from the strength and courage
of their spirits conquering pain and weakness, and keeping off, for a
time, death itself. We all know how madmen, diseased in their spirits,
will, when the fit is on them, have, for a few minutes, ten men’s
strength. Well, just think, if a man’s own spirit, when it is powerful,
can give his body such life and force, what must it have been with
Christ, who was filled full of _the_ Spirit—God’s Spirit, the Lord and
Giver of life. The Lord could not _help_ rising. All the disease, and
poison, and rottenness in the world, could not have made His body decay;
mountains on mountains could not have kept it down. His body!—the Prince
of Life!—He that was the life itself! It was impossible that death could
hold Him.
And does not this shew us _why_ He rose, that we might rise with Him?
What did He say about His own death? “Except a corn of wheat fall into
the ground and die, it abideth alone, but if it die it bringeth forth
much fruit.” He was the grain which fell into the ground and died, and
from His dead body sprung up another body—His glorified body; and we His
Church, His people, fed with that body—His members, however strange it
may sound—St. Paul said it, and therefore I dare to say it, little as I
know what it means—members of His flesh and of His bones.
But think! Remember what St. Paul tells you about this very matter in
that glorious chapter which is read in the burial-service, “how when thou
sowest seed, thou sowest not that body which it will have, but bare
grain; but God gives it a body as it hath pleased Him, and to every seed
its own body.” For the wheat-plant is in reality the same thing as the
wheat-seed, and its life the same life, different as the outside of it
may look. Dig it up just at this time of year, and you will find the
seed-corn all gone, sucked dry; the life of the wheat-seed has formed it
into a wheat-plant—yet it is the same individual thing. The substance of
the seed has gone into the root and the young blade; but it is the same
individual substance. You know it is, and though you cannot tell why,
yet you say “What a fine plant that seed has grown into,” because you
feel it is so, that the seed is the very same thing as the plant which
springs up from it, though its shape is changed, and its size, and its
colour, and the very stuff of which it was made is changed, since it was
a mere seed. And yet it is at bottom the same individual thing as the
seed was, with a new body and shape.
So with Christ’s body. It was changed after He rose. It had gone
through pain, and weakness, and death, gone down to the lowest depth of
them, and conquered them, and passed triumphant through them and far
beyond their power. His body was now a nobler, a more beautiful, a
glorified body, a spiritual body, one which could do whatever His Spirit
chose to make it do, one which could never die again, one which could
come through closed doors, appear and vanish as He liked, instead of
being bound to walk the earth, and stand cold and heat, sickness and
weariness.
Yet it was the very same body, just as the wheat-plant is the same as the
wheat-seed—the very same body. Every one knew His face again after His
resurrection. There was the very print of the nails to be seen in His
hands and feet, the spear-wound in His blessed side. So shall it be with
us, my friends. We shall rise again, and we shall be the same as we are
now, and yet not the same; our bodies shall be the same bodies, and yet
nobler, purer, spiritual bodies, which can know neither death, nor pain,
nor weariness. Then, never care, my friends, if we drop like ripe grain
into the bosom of mother earth,—if we are to spring up again as seedling
plants, after death’s long winter, on the resurrection morn. Truly says
the poet, {187} how
“Mother earth, she gathers all
Into her bosom, great and small:
Oh could we look into her face,
We should not shrink from her embrace.”
No, indeed! for if we look steadily with the wise, searching eye of faith
into the face of mother earth, we shall see how death is but the gate of
life, and this narrow churchyard, with its corpses close-packed
underneath the sod, would not seem to us a frightful charnel-house of
corruption. No! it would seem like what it is—a blessed, quiet,
seed-filled God’s garden, in which our forefathers, after their long-life
labour, lay sown by God’s friendly hand, waiting peaceful, one and all,
to spring up into leaf, and flower, and everlasting paradise-fruit,
beneath the breath of God’s Spirit at the last great day, when the Sun of
Righteousness arises in glory, and the summer begins which shall never
end.
One and all, did I say? Alas! would God it were so! We cannot hope as
for all, but they are dead and gone, and we are not here to judge the
dead. They have another Judge, and all shall be as He wills.
But we—we in whose limbs the breath of life still boils—we who can still
work, let us never forget all grain ripens not. There is some falls out
of the ear unripe, and perishes; some is picked out by birds; some
withers and decays in the ear, and yet gets into the barn with it, and is
sown too with the wheat, of which I never heard that any sprang up
again—ploughed up again it may be—a withered, dead husk of chaff as it
died, ploughed up to the resurrection of damnation to burn as chaff in
unquenchable fire; but the good seed alone, ripe, and safe with the
wheat-plant till it is ripe, that only will _spring up_ to the
resurrection of eternal life.
Now, consider again that parable of the wheat-plant. After it has sprung
up, what does it next, but _tiller_?—and every new shoot that tillers out
bears its own ear, ripens its own grain, twenty, thirty, or forty stems,
and yet they are all the same plant, living with the life of that one
original seed. So with Christ’s Church—His body the Church. As soon as
he rose, that new plant began to tiller. He did not keep His Spirit to
Himself, but poured it out on the apostles, and from them it spread and
spread—Each generation of Christians ripening, and bearing fruit, and
dying, a fresh generation of fruit springing up from them, and so on, as
we are now at this day. And yet all these plants, these millions and
millions of Christian men and women, who have lived since Christ’s
blessed resurrection, all are parts of that one original seed, the body
of Christ, whose members they are, and all owe their life to that one
spirit of Christ, which is in them all and through them all, as the life
of the original grain is in the whole crop which springs from it.
And what can you learn from this? Learn this, that in Christ you are
safe, out of Christ you are lost. But _really_ in Christ, I mean—not
like the dead and dying grains, mildewed and worm-eaten, which you find
here and there on the finest wheat-plant. Their end is to be burned, and
so will ours be, for all our springing out of Christ’s root, if the angel
reapers find us not good wheat, but chaff and mildew. Every branch in
Christ which beareth not fruit, His heavenly Father taketh away.
Therefore, never pride yourself on having been baptised into Christ,
never pride yourself on shewing some signs of God’s Spirit, on being
really good, right in this and right in that,—the question is, not so
much, Are you _in Christ_ at all, are you part of His tree, a member of
His body? but, Are you ripening there? If you are not ripening, you are
decaying, and your end will be as God has said. And do you wish to know
whether you are in Christ, safe, ripening? see whether you are like Him.
If the young grain does not shew like the seed grain, you may be sure it
is making no progress; and as surely as a wheat-plant never brought forth
rye, or a grape-tree thistles, so surely, if you are not like Christ in
your character, in patience, in meekness, in courage, truth, purity,
piety, and love, you may be of His planting, but you are none of His
ripening, and you will not be raised with Him at the last day, to flower
anew in the gardens of Paradise, world without end.
SERMON XVIII.
IMPROVEMENT.
PSALM xcii. 12.
“The righteous shall flourish like the palm-tree: he shall grow like
the cedar in Lebanon. Those that be planted in the house of the Lord
shall flourish in the courts of our God. They shall still bring
forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing.”
THE Bible is always telling Christian people to _go forwards_—to grow—to
become wiser and stronger, better and better day by day; that they ought
to become better, and better, because they can, if they choose, improve.
This text tells us so; it says that we shall bring forth more fruit in
our old age. Another text tells us that “those who wait on the Lord
shall renew their strength;” another tells us that we “shall go from
strength to strength.” Not one of St. Paul’s Epistles but talks of
growing in grace and in the knowledge of God, of being _filled_ with
God’s Spirit, of having our eyes more and more open to understand God’s
truth. Not one of St. Paul’s Epistles but contains prayers of St. Paul
that the men to whom he writes may become holier and wiser. And St. Paul
says that he himself needed to go forward—that he wanted fresh
strength—that he had to forget what was past, and consider all he had
done and felt as nothing, and press forward to the prize of his high
calling; that he needed to be daily conquering himself more and more,
keeping down his bad feelings, hunting out one bad habit after another,
lest, by any means, when he had preached to others, he himself should
become a castaway. Therefore, I said rightly, that the Bible is always
bidding us go forwards. You cannot read your Bibles without seeing this.
What else was the use of St. Paul’s Epistles? They were written to
Christian men, redeemed men, converted men, most of them better I fear
than ever we shall be; and for what? to tell them not be content to
remain as they were, to tell them to go forwards, to improve, to be sure
that they were only just inside the gate of God’s kingdom, and that if
they would go on to perfection, they would find strength, and holiness,
and blessing, and honour, and happiness, which they as yet did not dream
of. “Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect,”
said our blessed Lord to all men. “Be ye perfect,” says St. Paul to the
Corinthians, and the Ephesians, and all to whom he wrote; and so say I to
you now in God’s name, for Christ’s sake, as citizens of God’s kingdom,
as heirs of everlasting glory, “Be you perfect, even as your Father in
heaven is perfect.”
Now I ask you, my friends, is not this reasonable? It is reasonable, for
the Bible always speaks of our souls as living things. It compares them
to limbs of a body, to branches of a tree, often to separate plants—as in
our Lord’s parable of the tares and the wheat. Again, St. Paul tells us
that we have been planted in baptism in the likeness of Christ’s death;
and again, in the first Psalm, which says that the good man shall be like
a tree planted by the waterside; and again, in the text of my sermon,
which says “that those who are planted in the house of the Lord shall
flourish in the courts of our God. They shall still bring forth fruit in
old age; they shall be fat and flourishing.”
Now what does all this mean? It means that the life of our souls is in
some respects like the life of a plant; and, therefore, that as plants
grow, so our souls are to grow. Why do you plant anything, but in order
that it may _grow_ and become larger, stronger, bear flower and fruit?
Be sure God has planted us in His garden, Christ’s Church, for no other
reason. Consider, again—What is life but a continual growing, or a
continual decaying? If a tree does not get larger and stronger, year by
year, is not that a sure sign that it is unhealthy, and that decay has
begun in it, that it is unsound at heart? And what happens then? It
begins to become weaker and smaller, and cankered and choked with scurf
and moss till it dies. If a tree is not growing, it is sure in the long
run to be dying; and so are our souls. If they are not growing they are
dying; if they are not getting better they are getting worse. This is
why the Bible compares our souls to trees—not out of a mere pretty fancy
of poetry, but for a great, awful, deep, world-wide lesson, that every
tree in the fields may be a pattern, a warning, to us thoughtless men,
that as that tree is meant to grow, so our souls are meant to grow. As
that tree dies unless it grows, so our souls must die unless they grow.
Consider that!
But how does a tree grow? How are our souls to grow? Now here, again,
we shall understand heavenly things best by taking and considering the
pattern from among earthly things which the Bible gives us—the tree, I
mean. A tree grows in two ways. Its roots take up food from the ground,
its leaves take up food from the air. Its roots are its mouth, we may
say, and its leaves are its lungs. Thus the tree draws nourishment from
the earth beneath and from the heaven above; and so must our souls, my
friends, if they are to live and grow, they must have food both from
earth and from heaven. And this is what I mean—Why has God given us
senses, eyes, and ears, and understanding? That by them we may feed our
souls with things which we see and hear, things which are going on in the
world round us. We must read, and we must listen, and we must watch
people and their sayings and doings, and what becomes of them, and we
must try and act, and practise what is right for ourselves; and so we
shall, by using our eyes and ears and our bodies, get practice, and
experience, and knowledge, from the world round us—such as Solomon gives
us in his Proverbs—and so our eyes, and ears, and understandings, are to
be to us like roots, by which we may feed our souls with earthly learning
and experience. But is this enough? No, surely. Consider, again, God’s
example which He has given us—a tree. If you keep stripping all the
leaves off a tree, as fast as they grow, what becomes of it? It dies,
because without leaves it cannot get nourishment from the air, and the
rain, and the sunlight. Again, if you shut up a tree where it can get
neither rain, air, nor light, what happens? the tree certainly dies,
though it may be planted in the very richest soil, and have the very
strongest roots; and why? because it can get no food from the sky above.
So with our souls, my friends. If we get no food from above, our souls
will die, though we have all the wit, and learning, and experience, in
the world. We must be fed, and strengthened, and satisfied, with the
grace of God from above—with the Spirit of God. Consider how the Bible
speaks of God’s Spirit as the breath of God; for the very word _spirit_
means, originally, breath, or air, or gas, or a breeze of wind, shewing
us that as without the airs of heaven the tree would become stunted and
cankered, so our souls will without the fresh, purifying breath of God’s
Spirit. Again, God’s Spirit is often spoken of in Scripture as dew and
rain. His grace or favour, we read, is as dew on the grass; and again,
that God shall come unto us as the rain, as the first and latter rain
upon the earth; and again, speaking of the outpourings of God’s Spirit on
His Church, the Psalmist says that “He shall come down as the rain upon
the mown grass, as showers that water the earth;” and to shew us that as
the tree puts forth buds, and leaves, and tender wood, when it drinks in
the dew and rains, so our hearts will become tender, and bud out into
good thoughts and wise resolves, when God’s Spirit fills them with His
grace.