'After that He was seen of above five hundred brethren
at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this
present, but some are fallen asleep.'--1 COR. xv. 6.
There were, then, some five-and-twenty years after the Resurrection,
several hundred disciples who were known amongst the churches as
having been eyewitnesses of the risen Saviour. The greater part
survived; some, evidently a very few, had died. The proportion of the
living to the dead, after five-and-twenty years, is generally the
opposite. The greater part have 'fallen asleep'; some, a
comparatively few, remain 'unto this present.' Possibly there was
some divine intervention which supernaturally prolonged the lives of
these witnesses, in order that their testimony might be the more
lasting. But, be that as it may, they evidently were men of mark, and
some kind of honour and observance surrounded them, as was very
natural, and as appears from the fact that Paul here knows so
accurately (and can appeal to His fellow-Christians' accurate
knowledge) the proportion between the survivors and the departed. We
read of one of them in the Acts of the Apostles at a later date than
this, one Mnason, an 'original disciple.'
So we get a glimpse into the conditions of life in the early Church,
interesting and of value in an evidential point of view. But my
purpose at present is to draw your attention to the remarkable
language in which the Apostle here speaks of the living and the dead
amongst these witnesses. In neither case does he use the simple,
common words 'living' or 'dead'; but in the one clause he speaks of
their 'remaining,' and in the other of their 'falling asleep'; both
phrases being significant, and, as I take it, both being traced up to
the fact of their having seen the risen Lord as the cause why their
life could be described as a 'remaining,' and their death as a
'falling asleep.' In other words, we have here brought before us, by
these two striking expressions, the transforming effect upon life and
upon death of the faith in a risen Lord, whether grounded on sight or
not. And it is simply to these two points that I desire to turn now.
I. First, then, we have to consider what life may become to those who
see the risen Christ.
'The greater part remain until this present.' Now the word _remain_
is no mere synonym for living or surviving. It not only tells us the
fact that the survivors were living, but the kind of life that they
did live. It is very significant that it is the same expression as
our Lord used in the profound prophetic words, 'If I will that he
tarry till I come, what is that to thee?' Now we are told in John's
Gospel that 'that saying went abroad amongst the brethren,' and
inasmuch as it was a matter of common notoriety in the early Church,
it is by no means a violent supposition that it may be floating in
Paul's memory here, and may determine his selection of this
remarkable expression 'they remain,' or 'they tarry,' and they were
tarrying till the Master came. So, then, I think if we give due
weight to the significance of the phrase, we get two or three
thoughts worth pondering.
One of them is that the sight of a risen Christ will make life calm
and tranquil. Fancy one of these 500 brethren, after that vision,
going back to his quiet rural home in some little village amongst the
hills of Galilee. How small and remote from Him, and unworthy to
ruffle or disturb the heart in which the memory of that vision was
burning, would seem the things that otherwise would have been
important and distracting! The faith which we have in the risen
Christ ought to do the same thing for us, and will do it in the
measure in which there shines clearly before that inward eye, which
is our true means of apprehending Him, the vision which shone before
the outward gaze of that company of wondering witnesses. If we build
our nests amidst the tossing branches of the world's trees, they will
sway with every wind, and perhaps be blown from their hold altogether
by such a storm as we all have sometimes to meet. But we may build
our nests in the clefts of the rock, like the doves, and be quiet, as
they are. Distractions will cease to distract, and troubles will
cease to agitate, and across the heaving surface of the great ocean
there will come a Form beneath whose feet the waves smooth
themselves, and at whose voice the winds are still. They who see
Christ need not be troubled. The ship that is empty is tossed upon
the ocean, that which is well laden is steady. The heart that has
Christ for a passenger need not fear being rocked by any storm.
Calmness will come with the vision of the Lord, and we shall abide or
'remain,' for there will be no need for us to flee from this Refuge
to that, nor shall we be driven from our secure abode by any
contingencies. 'He that believeth shall not make haste.'
It is a good thing to cultivate the disposition that says about most
of the trifles of this life, 'It does not much matter'; but the only
way to prevent wholesome contempt of the world's trivialities from
degenerating into supercilious indifference is, to base it upon
Christ, discerned as near us and bestowing upon us the calmness of
His risen life. Make Him your scale of importance, and nothing will
be too small to demand and be worthy of the best efforts of your
work, but nothing will be too great to sweep you away from the
serenity of your faith.
Again, the vision of the risen Christ will also lead to patient
persistence in duty. If we have Him before us, the distasteful duty
which He sets us will not be distasteful, and the small tasks, in
which great faithfulness may be manifested, will cease to be small.
If we have Him before us we have in that risen Christ the great and
lasting Example of how patient continuance in well-doing triumphs
over the sorrows that it bears, by and in patiently bearing them, and
is crowned at last with glory and honour. The risen Christ is the
Pattern for the men who will not be turned aside from the path of
duty by any obstacles, dangers, or threats. The risen Christ is the
signal Example of glory following upon faithfulness, and of the crown
being the result of the Cross. The risen Christ is the manifest
Helper of them that put their trust in Him; and one of the plainest
lessons and of the most imperative commands which come from the
believing gaze upon that Lord who died because He would do the will
of the Father, and is throned and crowned in the heavens because He
died, is--By patient continuance in well-doing let us commit the
keeping of our souls to Him: and abide in the calling wherewith we
are called.
And, again, the sight of the risen Christ leads to a life of calm
expectancy. 'If I will that He _tarry_ till I come' conveys that
shade of meaning. The Apostle was to wait for the Lord from Heaven,
and that vision which was given to these 500 men sent them home to
their abodes to make all the rest of their lives one calm aspiration
for, and patient expectation of, the return of the Lord. These
primitive Christians expected that Jesus Christ would come speedily.
That expectation was disappointed in so far as the date was
concerned, but after nineteen centuries it still remains true that
all vigorous and vital Christian life must have in it, as a very
important element of its vitality, the onward look which ever is
anticipating, which often is desiring, and which constantly is
confident of, the coming of the Lord from Heaven. The Resurrection
has for its consequences, its sequel and corollary, first the
Ascension; then the long tract of time during which Jesus Christ is
absent, but still in divine presence rules the world; and, finally,
His coming again in that same body in which the disciples saw Him
depart from them. And no Christian life is up to the level of its
privileges, nor has any Christian faith grasped the whole articles of
its creed, except that which sets in the very centre of all its
visions of the future that great thought--He shall come again.
Questions of chronology have nothing to do with that. It stands there
before us, the certain fact, made certain and inevitable by the past
facts of the Cross and the Grave and Olivet. He has come, He will
come; He has gone, He will come back. And for us the life that we
live in the flesh ought to be a life of waiting for God's Son from
Heaven, and of patient, confident expectancy that when He shall be
manifested we also shall be manifested with Him in glory.
So much, then, for life--calm, persistent in every duty, and animated
by that blessed and far-off, but certain, hope, and all of these
founded upon the vision and the faith of a risen Lord. What have
fears and cares and distractions and faint-heartedness and gloomy
sorrow to do with the eyes that have beheld the Christ, and with the
lives that are based on faith in the risen Lord?
II. So, secondly, consider what death becomes to those who have seen
Christ risen from the dead.
'Some are fallen asleep.' Now that most natural and obvious metaphor
for death is not only a Christian idea, but is found, as would be
expected, in many tongues, but yet with a great and significant
difference. The Christian reason for calling death a sleep embraces a
great deal more than the heathen reason for doing so, and in some
respects is precisely the opposite of that, inasmuch as to most
others who have used the word, death has been a sleep that knew no
waking, whereas the very pith and centre of the Christian reason for
employing the symbol are that it makes our waking sure. We have here
what the act of dying and the condition of the dead become by virtue
of faith in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
They have 'fallen asleep.' The act of dying is but a laying one's
self down to rest, and a dropping out of consciousness of the
surrounding world. It is very remarkable and very beautiful that the
new Testament scarcely ever employs the words _dying_ and _death_ for
the act of separating body and spirit, or for the condition either of
the spirit parted from the body, or of the body parted from the
spirit. It keeps those grim words for the reality, the separation of
the soul from God; and it only exceptionally uses them for the shadow
and the symbol, the physical fact of the parting of the man from the
house which here he has dwelt in. But the reason why Christianity
uses these periphrases or metaphors, these euphemisms for death, is
the opposite of the reason why the world uses them. The world is so
afraid of dying that it durst not name the grim, ugly thing. The
Christian, or at least the Christian faith, is so little afraid of
death that it does not think such a trivial matter worth calling by
the name, but only names it 'falling asleep.'
Even when the circumstances of that dropping off to slumber are
painful and violent, the Bible still employs the term. Is it not
striking that the first martyr, kneeling outside the city, bruised by
stones and dying a bloody death, should have been said to fall
asleep? If ever there was an instance in which the gentle metaphor
seemed all inappropriate it was that cruel death, amidst a howling
crowd, and with fatal bruises, and bleeding limbs mangled by the
heavy rocks that lay upon them. But yet, 'when he had said this he
fell asleep.' If that be true of such a death, no physical pains of
any kind make the sweet word inappropriate for any.
We have here not only the designation of the act of dying, but that
of the condition of the dead. They are fallen asleep, and they
continue asleep. How many great thoughts gather round that metaphor
on which it is needless for me to try to dilate! They will suggest
themselves without many words to you all.
There lies in it the idea of repose. 'They rest from their labours.'
Sleep restores strength, and withdraws a man at once from effort on
the outer world, and from communication from it. We may carry the
analogy into that unseen world. We know nothing about the relations
to an external universe of the departed who sleep in Jesus. It may be
that, if they sleep in Him, since He knows all, they, through Him,
may know, too, something--so much as He pleases to impart to them--of
what is happening here. And it may even be that, if they sleep in
Him, and He wields the energies of Omnipotence, they, through Him,
may have some service to do, even while they wait for their house
which is from heaven. But there is no need for, nor profit in, such
speculations. It is enough that the sweet emblem suggests repose, and
that in that sleep there are folded around the sleepers the arms of
the Christ on whose bosom they rest, as an infant does on its first
and happiest home--its mother's breast.
But then, besides that, the emblem suggests the idea of continuous
and conscious existence. A man asleep does not cease to be a man; a
dead man does not cease to live. It has often been argued from this
metaphor that we are to conceive of the space between death and the
resurrection as being a period of unconsciousness, but the analogies
seem to me to be in the opposite direction. A sleeping man does not
cease to know himself to be, and he does not cease to know himself to
be himself. That mysterious consciousness of personal identity
survives the passage from waking to sleep, as dreams sufficiently
show us. And, therefore, they that sleep know themselves to be.
And, finally, the emblem suggests the idea of waking. Sleep is a
parenthesis. If the night comes, the morning comes. 'If winter comes,
can spring be far behind?' They that sleep will awake, and be
satisfied when they 'awake with Thy likeness.' And so these three
things--repose, conscious, continuous existence, and the certainty of
awaking--all lie in that metaphor.
Now, then, the risen Christ is the only ground of such hope, and
faith in Him is the only state of mind which is entitled to cherish
it. Nothing proves immortality except that open grave. Every other
foundation is too weak to bear the weight of such a superstructure.
The current of present opinion shows, I think, that neither
metaphysical nor ethical arguments for the future life will stand the
force of the disintegrating criticism which is brought to bear upon
that hope by the fashionable materialism of this generation. There is
one barrier that will resist that force, and only one, and that is
the historical facts that Jesus Christ died, and that Jesus Christ
has risen again. He rose; therefore death is not the end of
individual existence. He rose; therefore life beyond the grave is
possible for humanity. He rose; therefore His sacrifice for the
world's sin is accepted, and I may be delivered from my guilt and my
burden. He rose; therefore He is declared to be the Son of God with
power. He rose; therefore we, if we trust Him, may partake in His
Resurrection and in some reflection of His glory. The old Greek
architects were often careless of the solidity of the soil on which
they built their temples, and so, many of them have fallen in ruins.
The Temple of Immortality can be built only upon the rock of that
proclamation--Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. And we, dear
brethren, should have all our hopes founded upon that one fact.
So then, for us, the calm, peaceful passage from life into what else
is the great darkness is possible on condition of our having beheld
the risen Lord. These witnesses of whom my text speaks, Paul would
suggest to us, laid themselves quietly down to sleep, because before
them there still hovered the memory of the vision which they had
beheld. Faith in the risen Christ is the anchor of the soul in death,
and there is nothing else by which we can hold then.
As the same Apostle, in one of his other letters, puts it, the belief
that Christ is risen is not only the irrefragable ground of our hope
that we, too, shall rise, but has the power to change the whole
aspect of our death. Did you ever observe the emphasis with which He
says, 'If we believe that Jesus _died_ and rose again, even so
them also which _sleep_ in Jesus will God bring with Him?' His
death was death indeed, and faith in it softens ours to sleep. He
bore the reality that we might never need to know it, and if our poor
hearts are resting upon that dear Lord, then the flames are but
painted ones and will not burn, and we shall pass through them, and
no smell of fire will be upon us, and all that will be consumed will
be the bonds which bind us. He has abolished death. The physical fact
remains, but all which to men makes the idea of death is gone if we
trust the risen Lord. So that, between two men dying under precisely
the same circumstances, of the same disease, in adjacent beds in the
same hospital, there may be such a difference as that the same word
cannot be applied to the experiences of both.
My dear friends, we have each of us to pass through that last
struggle; but we may make it either a quiet going to sleep with a
loved Face bending over our closing eyes, like a mother's over her
child's cradle, and the same Face meeting us when we open them in the
morning of heaven; or we may make it a reluctant departure from all
that we care for, and a trembling advance into all from which
conscience and heart shrink.
Which is it going to be to you? The answer depends upon that to
another question. Are you looking to that Christ that died and is
alive for evermore as your life and your salvation? Do you hold fast
that Gospel which Paul preached, 'how that Christ died for our sins
according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose
again the third day, according to the Scriptures'? If you do, life
will be a calm, persevering, expectant waiting upon Him, and death
will be nothing more terrible than falling asleep.