And, generally speaking, this place is assigned to it both by

believers and by unbelievers. It is recognised that it was the belief

in the Resurrection which first revived the hopes of Christ's

followers and drew them together to wait for the promise of His

Spirit. It is recognised that whether the Resurrection be a fact or

no, the Church of Christ was founded on the belief that it had taken

place, so that if that had been removed the Church could not have

been. This is affirmed as decisively by unbelievers as by believers.

The great leader of modern unbelief (Strauss) declares that the

Resurrection is "the centre of the centre, the real heart of

Christianity as it has been until now;" while one of his ablest

opponents says, "The Resurrection created the Church, the risen Christ

made Christianity; and even now the Christian faith stands or falls

with Him.... If it be true that no living Christ ever issued from the

tomb of Joseph, then that tomb becomes the grave, not of a man, but of

a religion, with all the hopes built on it and all the splendid

enthusiasms it has inspired" (Fairbairn).

It is not difficult to perceive what it was in the resurrection of

Christ which gave it this importance.

1. First, it was the convincing proof that Christ's words were true,

and that He was what He had claimed to be. He Himself had on more

occasions than one hinted that such proof was to be given, "Destroy

this temple," He said, "and in three days I will raise it again." The

sign which was to be given, notwithstanding His habitual refusal to

yield to the Jewish craving for miracle, was the sign of the prophet

Jonah. As he had been thrown out and lost for three days and nights,

but had thereby only been forwarded in his mission, so our Lord was to

be thrown out as endangering the ship, but was to rise again to fuller

and more perfect efficiency. In order that His claim to be the Messiah

might be understood, it was necessary that He should die; but in order

that it might be believed, it was needful that He should rise. Had He

not died, His followers would have continued to expect a reign of

earthly power; His death showed them no such reign could be, and

convinced them His spiritual power sprang out of apparent weakness.

But had He not risen again, all their hopes would have been blighted.

All who had believed in Him would have joined with the Emmaus

disciples in their hopeless cry, "We thought that this had been He who

should have redeemed Israel."

It was the resurrection of our Lord, then, which convinced His

disciples that His words had been true, that He was what He had

claimed to be, and that He was not mistaken regarding His own person,

His work, His relation to the Father, the prospects of Himself and His

people. This was the answer given by God to the doubts, and calumnies,

and accusations of men. Jesus at the last had stood alone, unsupported

by one favouring voice. His own disciples forsook Him, and in their

bewilderment knew not what to think. Those who considered Him a

dangerous and seditious person or at best a crazed enthusiast found

themselves backed by the voice of the people and urged to extreme

measures, with none to remonstrate save the heathen judge, none to

pity save a few women. This delusion, they congratulated themselves,

was stamped out. And stamped out it would have been but for the

Resurrection. "Then it was seen that while the world had scorned the

Son of God, the Father had been watching over Him with unceasing love;

that while the world had placed Him at its bar as a malefactor and

blasphemer, the Father had been making ready for Him a seat at His own

right hand; that while the world nailed Him to the cross, the Father

had been preparing for Him 'many crowns' and a name that is above

every name; that while the world had gone to the grave in the garden,

setting a watch and sealing the stone, and had then returned to its

feasting and merriment, because the Preacher of righteousness was no

longer there to trouble it, the Father had waited for the third

morning in order to bring Him forth in triumph from the grave."[16]

[16] Milligan, _The Resurrection of our Lord_, p. 150.

This contrast between the treatment Christ received at the hands of

men and His justification by the Father in the Resurrection fills and

colours all the addresses delivered by the Apostles to the people in

the immediately succeeding days. They evidently accepted the

Resurrection as God's great attestation to the person and work of

Christ. It changed their own thoughts about Him, and they expected it

would change the thoughts of other men. They saw now that His death

was one of the necessary steps in His career, one of the essential

parts of the work He had come to do. Had Christ not been raised, they

would have thought Him weak and mistaken as other men. The beauty and

promise of His words which had so attracted them would now have seemed

delusive and unbearable. But in the light of the Resurrection they saw

that the Christ "ought to have suffered these things and so to enter

His glory." They could now confidently say, "He died for our sins, and

was raised again for our justification."

2. Secondly, the resurrection of Christ occupies a fundamental place

in the Christian creed, because by it there is disclosed a real and

close connection between this world and the unseen, eternal world.

There is no need now of argument to prove a life beyond; here is one

who is in it. For the resurrection of Christ was not a return to this

life, to its wants, to its limitations, to its inevitable close; but

it was a resurrection to a life for ever beyond death. Neither was it

a discarding of humanity on Christ's part, a cessation of His

acceptance of human conditions, a rising to some kind of existence to

which man has no access. On the contrary, it was because He continued

truly human that in human body and with human soul He rose to

veritable human life beyond the grave. If Jesus rose from the dead,

then the world into which He is gone is a real world, in which men can

live more fully than they live here. If He rose from the dead, then

there is an unseen Spirit mightier than the strongest material powers,

a God who is seeking to bring us out of all evil into an eternally

happy condition. Quite reasonably is death invested with a certain

majesty, if not terror, as the mightiest of physical things. There may

be greater evils; but they do not affect all men, but only some, or

they debar men from certain enjoyments and a certain kind of life,

but not from all. But death shuts men out from everything with which

they have here to do, and launches them into a condition of which they

know absolutely nothing. Any one who conquers death and scatters its

mystery, who shows in his own person that it is innocuous, and that it

actually betters our condition, brings us light that reaches us from

no other quarter. And He who shows this superiority over death in

virtue of a moral superiority, and uses it for the furtherance of the

highest spiritual ends, shows a command over the whole affairs of men

which makes it easy to believe He can guide us into a condition like

His own. As Peter affirms, it is "by the resurrection of Jesus Christ

from the dead we are begotten again unto a lively hope."

3. For, lastly, it is in the resurrection of Christ we see at once the

norm or type of our life here and of our destiny hereafter. Holiness

and immortality are two aspects, two manifestations, of the Divine

life we receive from Christ. They are inseparable the one from the

other. His Spirit is the source of both. "If the Spirit that raised up

the Lord Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, He that raised up Christ

Jesus from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies through His

Spirit that dwelleth in you." If we have now the one evidence of His

indwelling in us, we shall one day have the other. The hope that

should uplift and purify every part of the Christian's character is a

hope which is shadowy, unreal, inoperative, in those who merely know

about Christ and His work; it becomes a living hope, full of

immortality, in all who are now actually drawing their life from

Christ, who have their life truly hid with Christ in God, who are in

heart and will one with the Most High, in whom is all life.

Therefore does Paul so continually hold up to us the risen life of

Christ as that to which we are to be conformed. We are to rise with

Him to newness of life. As Christ has done with death, having died to

sin once, so must His people be dead to sin and live to God with Him.

Sometimes in weariness or dejection one feels as if he had seen the

best of everything experienced all he can experience, and must now

simply endure life; he sees no prospect of anything fresh, or

attractive, or reviving. But this is not because he has exhausted

life, but because he has not begun it. To the "children of the

Resurrection," who have followed Christ in His path to life by

renouncing sin, and conquering self, and giving themselves to God,

there is a springing life in their own soul that renews hope and

energy.

XXII.

_THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST (continued)._

II. ITS PROOF.

Paul, having affirmed that the resurrection of Christ is an essential

element of the Gospel, proceeds to sketch the evidence for the fact.

That evidence mainly consists in the attestation of those who at

various times and in various places and circumstances had seen the

Lord after His death. Other evidence there is, as Paul indicates. In

certain unspecified passages of the Old Testament he thinks a

discerning reader might have found sufficient intimation that when the

Messiah came He would both die and rise again. But as he himself had

not at first recognised these intimations in the Old Testament, he

does not press them upon others, but appeals to the simple fact that

many of those who had been familiar with the appearance of Christ

while He lived saw Him after death alive.

As a preliminary to the positive evidence here adduced by Paul, it may

be remarked that we have no record of any contemporary denial of the

fact, save only the story put in the mouths of the soldiers by the

chief priests. Matthew tells us that it was currently reported that

the soldiers who had been on guard at the sepulchre were bribed by the

priests and elders to say that the disciples had come in the night

and stolen the body. But whatever temporary purpose they fancied this

might serve, the great purpose it now serves is to prove the truth of

the Resurrection, for the main point is admitted, the tomb was empty.

As for the story itself, its falsehood must have been apparent; and

probably no one in Jerusalem was so simple as to be taken in by it.

For, in point of fact, the authorities had taken steps to prevent this

very thing. They were resolved there should be no tampering with the

grave, and accordingly had set their official seal upon it and placed

a guard to watch.

The evidence thus unintentionally furnished by the authorities is

important. Their action after the Resurrection proves that the tomb

was empty; while their action previous to the Resurrection proves that

it was emptied by no ordinary interposition, but by the actual rising

of Jesus from the dead. So beyond doubt was this that when Peter stood

before the Sanhedrim and affirmed it no one was hardy enough to

contradict him. Had they been able to persuade themselves that the

disciples had tampered with the guard, or overpowered them, or

terrified them in the night by strange appearances, why did they not

prosecute the disciples for breaking the official seal? Could they

have had a more plausible pretext for exploding the Christian faith

and stamping out the nascent heresy? They were perplexed and alarmed

at the growth of the Church; what hindered them from bringing proof

that there had been no resurrection? They had every inducement to do

so, yet they did not. If the body was still in the grave, nothing was

easier than to produce it; if the grave was empty, as they affirmed,

because the disciples had stolen the body, no more welcome handle

against them could have been furnished to the authorities. But they

could not in open court pretend any such thing. They knew that what

their guard reported was true. In short, there was no object the

Sanhedrim would more gladly have compassed than to explode the belief

in the resurrection of Christ; if that belief was false, they had

ample means of showing it to be so: and yet they did absolutely

nothing that had any weight with the public mind. It is apparent that

not only the disciples, but the authorities, were compelled to admit

the fact of the Resurrection.

The idea that there was only a pretended resurrection, vamped up by

the disciples, may therefore be dismissed; and indeed no well-informed

person nowadays would venture to affirm such a thing. It is admitted

by those who deny the Resurrection as explicitly as by those who

affirm it that the disciples had a _bonâ fide_ belief that Jesus had

risen from the dead and was alive. The only question is, How was that

belief produced? And to this question there are three answers: (1)

that the disciples saw our Lord alive after the Crucifixion, but He

had never been dead; (2) that they only thought they saw Him; and (3)

that they did actually see Him alive after being dead and buried.

1. The first answer is plainly inadequate. We are asked to account for

the Christian Church, for the belief in a risen Lord which animated

the first disciples with a faith, a hope, a courage, whose power is

felt to this day; we ask for an explanation of this singular

circumstance that a number of men arrived at the conclusion that they

had an almighty Friend, One who had all power in heaven and on earth;

and we are told, in explanation of this, that they had seen their

Master barely rescued from crucifixion, creeping about the earth,

scarcely able to move, all stained with blood, soiled from the tomb,

pale, weak, helpless, and this object caused them to believe He was

almighty. As one of the most sceptical of critics himself says, "one

who had thus crept forth half dead from the grave and crawled about a

sickly patient, needing medical and surgical assistance, nursing and

strengthening, and who finally succumbed to his sufferings, could

never have given his followers the impression that he was the

Conqueror over death and the grave, the Prince of life. Such a

recovery could only have weakened or at best given a pathetic tinge to

the impression which he had made upon them by his life and death; it

could not possibly have changed their sorrow into ecstasy, and raised

their reverence into worship."

This explanation then may be dismissed. It is neither in harmony with

the facts, nor is it adequate as an explanation.

It is not in harmony with the facts, because the fact of His death was

certified by the surest authority. There was in the world at that

time, and there is in the world now, nothing more punctiliously

accurate than a soldier trained under the old Roman discipline. The

punctilious exactness of this discipline is seen in the conduct both

of the soldiers at the cross and of Pilate. Though the soldiers see

that Jesus is dead, they make sure of His death by a spear-thrust, a

handbreadth wide, sufficient of itself, as they very well knew, to

cause death. And when Pilate is applied to for the body, he will not

give it up until he has received from the centurion on duty the

necessary certificate that the sentence of death has actually been

executed.

Neither is the supposition that Jesus survived the Crucifixion and

appeared to His disciples in this rescued condition any explanation

of their faith in Him as a risen, glorious, almighty Lord. The Person

they saw and afterwards believed in was not a bleeding, crushed,

defeated man, who had death still to look forward to, but a Person who

had passed through and conquered death, and was now alive for

evermore, opening for Himself and to them the gates of a glorious and

deathless life.

2. The belief of the disciples is explained with greater appearance of

insight by those who say that they imagined they saw the risen Lord,

although in reality they did not. There are, it is pointed out,

several ways in which the disciples may have been deceived. For

example, some clever and scheming person may have personated Jesus.

Such personations have been made, but never with such results. When

Postumus Agrippa was killed, one of his slaves secreted or dispersed

the ashes of the murdered man, to destroy the evidence of his death,

and retired for a time till his hair and beard were grown, to favour a

certain likeness which he actually bore him. Meanwhile, taking a few

intimates into his confidence, he spread a report, which found ready

listeners, that Agrippa still lived. He glided from town to town,

showing himself in the dusk for a few minutes only at a time to men

prepared for the sudden apparition, until it came to be noised abroad

that the gods had saved the grandson of Agrippa from the fate intended

for him, and that he was about to visit the city and claim his

rightful inheritance. But no sooner did the vulgar imposture take this

practical shape and come into contact with the realities of life than

the whole trick exploded. Imposture, in fact, does not fit the case

before us at all; and the more we consider the combination of

qualities required in any one who could undertake to personate the

risen Lord, the more we shall be persuaded that the right explanation

of the belief in the Resurrection is not to be sought in this

direction.

Again, one of the most reasonable and influential of our

contemporaries ascribes "the great myth of Christ's bodily revival to

the belief on the part of the disciples that such a soul could not

become extinct. In a lesser way the grave of a beloved friend has been

to many a man the birthplace of his faith; and it is obvious that in

the case of Christ every condition was fulfilled which would raise

such sudden conviction to the height of passionate fervour. The first

words of the disciples to one another on that Easter morn may well

have been 'He is not dead. His spirit is this day in paradise among

the sons of God.'" Quite so; they of course believed that His spirit

was in paradise, and for that very reason fully expected to find His

body in the tomb. No ordinary visit to a grave, nor any ordinary

results flowing from such a visit, throw light on the case before us,

because in ordinary circumstances sane men do not believe that their

friends are restored to them, and are standing in bodily palpable

shape before them. There is no likelihood whatever that their belief

in the continued existence of their Master's spirit should have given

rise to the conviction that they had seen Him. It might have given

rise to such expressions as that He would be with them to the end of

the world, but not to the conviction that they had seen Him in the

body.

Here, again, is Rénan's account of the growth of this belief: "To

Jesus was to happen the same fortune which is the lot of all men who

have riveted the attention of their fellow-men. The world, accustomed

to attribute to them superhuman virtues, cannot admit that they have

submitted to the unjust, revolting, iniquitous law of the death common

to all. At the moment in which Mahomet expired Omar rushed from the

tent, sword in hand, and declared that he would hew down any one who

should dare to say that the prophet was no more.... Heroes do not die.

What is true existence but the recollection of us which survives in

the hearts of those who love us? For some years this adored Master had

filled the little world by which He was surrounded with joy and hope;

could they consent to allow Him to the decay of the tomb? No; He had

lived so entirely in those who surrounded Him, that they could but

affirm that after His death He was still living." M. Rénan is careful

not to remind us that the uproar occasioned by Omar's announcement was

stilled by the calm voice of Abu Bekr, who also came forth from the

deathbed of Mahomet with the memorable words, "Whoso hath worshipped

Mahomet, let him know that Mahomet is dead, but whoso hath worshipped

God that the Lord liveth and doth not die." The great critic omits

also to notice that none of the Apostles said, like Omar, that their

Master was not dead; they admitted and felt His death keenly; and it

is vain to attempt to confound things essentially distinct, the

assertion of a matter of fact, viz., that the Lord had risen again,

with the sentimental or regretful resuscitation of a man's image in

the hearts of his surviving friends.

Besides, it should be observed that all these hypotheses which explain

the belief in the Resurrection by supposing that the disciples

imagined they had seen Christ, or persuaded themselves that He still

lived, omit altogether to explain how they disposed of the tomb of

our Lord, in which, according to this hypothesis, His body was still

quietly reposing. One or two persons in a peculiarly excitable state

might suppose they had seen a figure resembling a person about whom

they were concerned; but how the belief that the tomb was empty could

take any hold on them or on the thousands who must have visited it in

the succeeding weeks is not explained, nor is any attempt made to

explain it.

Is there then no possibility of the disciples having been deceived?

May they not have been mistaken? May they not have seen what they

wished to see, as other men have sometimes done? Men of vivid fancy or

of a boastful spirit sometimes come really to believe they have done

and said things they never did or said. Is it out of the question to

imagine that the disciples may have been similarly misled? Had the

belief in the Resurrection depended on the report of one man, had

there been only one or a few eyewitnesses of the matter, their

evidence might have been explained away on this ground. It is

possible, of course, that one or two persons who were anxiously

looking for the resurrection of Jesus might have persuaded themselves

they saw Him, might persuade themselves that some distant figure or

some gleam of morning sunshine among the trees of the garden was the

looked-for person. It requires no profound psychological knowledge to

teach us that occasionally visions are seen. But what we have here to

explain is how not one but several persons, not together but in

different places and at different times, not all in one mood of mind

but in various moods, came to believe they had seen the risen Lord. He

was recognised, not by persons who expected to see Him alive, but by

women who went to anoint Him dead; not by credulous, excitable

persons, but by men who would not believe till they had gone to and

into the sepulchre; not by persons so enthusiastic and creative of

their own belief as to mistake any passing stranger or even a gleam of

light for Him they sought, but so slow to believe, so scornfully

incredulous of resurrection, so resolutely sceptical and so keenly

alive to the possibility of delusion, that they vowed nothing would

satisfy them but the test of touch and sight. It was a belief

produced, not by one extraordinary and doubtful appearance, but by

repeated and prolonged appearances to persons in various places and of

various temperaments.

This supposition, therefore, that the disciples were prepared to

believe in the Resurrection and wished to believe it, and that what

they wished to see they thought they saw, must be given up. It has

never been shown that the disciples _had_ such a belief; it formed no

part of the Jewish creed regarding the Messiah: and the idea that they

actually were in this expectant state of mind is thoroughly

contradicted by the narrative. So far from being hopeful, they were

sad and gloomy, as witness the melancholy, resigned despair of the two

friends on the road to Emmaus.

"It is a woe 'too deep for tears' when all

Is reft at once, when some surpassing spirit,

Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves

Those who remain behind, not sobs or groans,

But pale despair and cold tranquillity."

Such was the state of mind of the bereft disciples. They thought all

was over. The women who went with their spices to anoint the

dead--_they_ certainly were not expecting to find their Lord risen.

The men to whom they announced what they had seen were sceptical;

some of them laughed at the women, and called their report "idle

tales," and would not believe. Mary Magdalene was so little expecting

to see her Lord alive again that when He did appear to her she thought

He was the gardener, the _only_ person she dreamt of seeing going

about at that hour in the garden. Thomas, with all the resolute

distrust of others which a modern sceptic could show, vows he will

believe such a wild imagination on no man's word, and unless he sees

the Lord with his own eyes and is allowed to test the reality of the

figure by touch as well, he will not be convinced. To the disciples on

the way to Emmaus, though they had never heard such conversation

before as that of the Person who joined them, it never once occurred

that this could be the Lord. In short, there was not one person to

whom our Lord appeared who was not taken wholly by surprise. So far

were they from depicting the Resurrection in their hopes and fancies

with such vividness as to make it seem to take outward shape and

reality, that even when it did actually take place they could scarcely

believe it on the strongest evidence. We are compelled, therefore, to

dismiss the idea that the first disciples believed in the resurrection

because they wished to do so and were prepared to do so.

3. There remains, therefore, only the third explanation of the

disciples' belief in the Resurrection: they did see Him alive after He

had been dead and buried. Plainly it was no phantom, or ghost, or

imaginary appearance which could personate their lost Master and rouse

them from the despondency, and inaction, and timidity of disappointed

hopes to the calmest consistency of plan and the firmest courage. It

was no vision created by their own imagination which could at once

and for ever alter the idea of the Messiah which the disciples, in

common with all their countrymen, held. It was no phantom who could

imitate the impressive individuality of the Lord and continue His

identity into new scenes, who could inspire the disciples with unity

of purpose, and who could lead them forward to the most splendid

victories men have ever won. No; nothing will explain the faith of the

Apostles and of the rest but the fact of their really seeing the Lord

after His death clothed in power. The men who said they had seen Him

were men of probity; they were men who showed themselves worthy of

being witnesses to so great an event; men animated by no paltry spirit

of vainglory, but by seriousness, even sublimity, of mind; men whose

lives and conduct require an explanation, and which are explained by

their having been brought in contact with the spiritual world in this

surprising and solemnizing manner.

The testimony of Paul himself is in some respects more convincing than

that of those who saw the Lord immediately after the Resurrection.

Certainly he was neither anxious to believe nor likely to be ignorant

of the facts. He had devoted himself to the extermination of the new

faith; all his hopes as a Pharisee and as a Jew were banded against

it. He had the best means of ascertaining the truth, living on terms

of friendship with the leading men in Jerusalem. It is simply

inconceivable that he should have abandoned all his prospects and

entered on a wholly different life without carefully investigating the

chief fact which influenced him in making this change. It is of course

said that Paul was a nervous, excitable creature, probably epileptic,

and certainly liable to see visions. It is insinuated that his

conversion was due to the combined influence of epilepsy and a

thunderstorm--of all the unlucky suggestions of modern scepticism

perhaps the unluckiest. Were it true, one could only wish epilepsy

commoner than it is. We have to account not only for Paul's

conversion, but for his abiding by the convictions at first produced

in him. It is out of the question to suppose that he did not spend

much of the immediately succeeding years in examining the grounds of

the Christian faith and in questioning himself as to his own belief.

Paul was no doubt eager and enthusiastic, but no man was ever better

fitted to move among the realities of life or to ascertain what these

realities are. Englishmen regard Paley as one of the best

representatives of the combined acuteness and sense, penetration and

solidity of judgment, by which English judges are supposed to be

characterized; and Paley says of Paul, "His letters furnish evidence

of the soundness and sobriety of his judgment, and his morality is

everywhere calm, pure, and rational; adapted to the condition, the

activity, and the business of social life and of its various

relations; free from the overscrupulousness and austerities of

superstition, and from what was more perhaps to be apprehended, the

abstractions of quietism and the soarings and extravagances of

fanaticism." But really no person of ordinary capacity needs

certificates of Paul's sanity. No saner or more commanding intellect

ever headed a complex and difficult movement. There is no one of that

generation whose testimony to the Resurrection is more worth having,

and we have it in the most emphatic form of a life based upon it.

No one, so far as I know, who has taken a serious interest in the

evidence adduced for this event, has denied that it would be quite

sufficient to authenticate any ordinary historical event. In point of

fact, the majority of the events of past history are accepted on much

slenderer evidence than that which we have for the Resurrection. The

evidence we have for it is of precisely the same kind as that on which

we accept ordinary events; it is the testimony of the persons

concerned, the simple statements of eyewitnesses and of those who were

acquainted with eyewitnesses. It is not a prophetical, or poetical, or

symbolical, or supernatural statement, but the plain and unvarnished

testimony of ordinary men. The accounts vary in many particulars, but

as to the central fact that the Lord rose and was seen over and over

again there is no variation, and such variations as there are are

merely such as exist in all similar accounts by different individuals

of one and the same event. In short, the evidence can be refused only

on the ground that no evidence, however strong, could prove such an

incredible event. It is admitted that the evidence would be accepted

in any other case, but this reported event is in itself incredible.

The idea of any interference with the physical laws which rule the

world, no matter how important an end is to be served by the

interference, is rejected as out of the question. This seems to me

quite an illogical method of dealing with the subject. The

supernatural is rejected as a preliminary, so as to bar any

consideration of the most appropriate evidences of the supernatural.

Before looking at that which, if not the most effective proof of the

supernatural, is at least among those arguments which chiefly deserve

attention, the mind is made up to reject all evidence of the

supernatural.

The first business of scientific men is to look at facts. Many facts

which at first sight seemed to contradict previously ascertained laws

were ultimately found to indicate the presence of a higher law. Why

are men of science so terrified by the word "miracle"? This event may,

like the visit of a comet, have occurred only once in the world's

history; but it need not on that account be irreducible to law or to

reason. The resurrection of Christ is unique, because He is unique.

Find another Person bearing the same relation to the race and living

the same life, and you will find a similar resurrection. To say that

it is unusual or unprecedented is to say nothing at all to the

purpose.

Besides, those who reject the resurrection of Christ as impossible are

compelled to accept an equally astounding moral miracle--the miracle,

I mean, that those who had the best means of ascertaining the truth

and every possible inducement to ascertain it should all have been

deceived, and that this deception should have been the most fruitful

source of good, not only to them, but to the whole world.

We are brought then to the conclusion that the disciples believed in

the resurrection of Christ because it had actually taken place. No

other account of their belief has ever been given which commends

itself to the common understanding which accepts what appeals to it.

No account of the belief has been given which is at all likely to gain

currency or which is more credible than that which it seeks to

supplant. The belief in the Resurrection which so suddenly and

effectively possessed the first disciples remains unexplained by any

other supposition than the simple one that the Lord did rise again.

_CONSEQUENCES OF DENYING RESURRECTION._

"Now if Christ be preached that He rose from the dead, how say

some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if

there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen:

and if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your

faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God;

because we have testified of God that He raised up Christ: whom

He raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not. For if the

dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: and if Christ be not

raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they

also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this

life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most

miserable. But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the

firstfruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by

man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all

die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every man in

his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are

Christ's at His coming. Then cometh the end, when He shall have

delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father; when He shall

have put down all rule and all authority and power. For He must

reign, till He hath put all enemies under His feet. The last

enemy that shall be destroyed is death. For He hath put all

things under His feet. But when He saith, all things are put

under Him, it is manifest that He is excepted, which did put all

things under Him. And when all things shall be subdued unto Him,

then shall the Son also Himself be subject unto Him that put all

things under Him, that God may be all in all. Else what shall

they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at

all? why are they then baptized for the dead? And why stand we in

jeopardy every hour? I protest by your rejoicing which I have in

Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily. If after the manner of men I

have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantageth it me, if

the dead rise not? let us eat and drink; for to-morrow we die. Be

not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners. Awake to

righteousness, and sin not; for some have not the knowledge of

God: I speak this to your shame."--1 COR. xv. 12-34.

XXIII

_CONSEQUENCES OF DENYING RESURRECTION._

In endeavouring to restore among the Corinthians the belief in the

resurrection of the body, Paul shows the fundamental place occupied in

the Christian creed by the resurrection of Christ, and what

attestation His resurrection had received. He further exhibits certain

consequences which flow from denial of the resurrection. These

consequences are (1) that if there is no resurrection of the body,

then Christ is not risen, and that, therefore, (2) the Apostles who

witnessed to that resurrection are false witnesses; (3) that those who

had already died believing in Christ, had perished, and that our hope

in Christ must be confined to this life; (4) that baptism for the dead

is a vain folly if the dead rise not. To the statement and discussion

of these consequences Paul devotes a large part of this chapter, from

verse 12 to verse 34. Let us take the least important consequence

first.

1. "If the dead rise not at all, what shall they do who are baptized

for the dead?" (ver. 29)--an enquiry of which the Corinthians no doubt

felt the full force, but which is rather lost upon us because we do

not know what it means. Some have thought that as baptism is sometimes

used in Scripture as equivalent to immersion in a sea of troubles,

Paul means to ask, "What shall they do, what hope have they, who are

plunged in grief for the friends they have lost?" Some think it refers

to those who have been baptized with Christ's baptism, that is to say,

have suffered martyrdom and so entered into the Church of the dead.

Others again think, that to be baptized "for the dead" means no more

than ordinary baptism, in which the believer looks forward to the

resurrection from the dead. The primitive form of baptism brought

death and the resurrection vividly before the believer's mind, and

confirmed his hope in the resurrection, which hope was vain if there

is no resurrection.

The plain meaning of the words, however, seems to point to a vicarious

baptism, in which a living friend received baptism as a proxy for a

person who had died without baptism. Of such a custom there is

historical trace. Even before the Christian era, among the Jews when a

man died in a state of ceremonial defilement it was customary for a

friend of the deceased to perform in his stead the washings and other

rites which the dead man would have performed had he recovered. A

similar practice prevailed to some small extent among the primitive

Christians, although it was never admitted as a valid rite by the

Church Catholic. Then, as now, it sometimes happened that on the

approach of death the thoughts of unbelieving persons were strongly

turned towards the Christian faith, but before baptism could be

administered death cut down the intending Christian. Baptism was

generally postponed until youth or even middle life was passed, in

order that a large number of sins might be washed away in baptism, or

that fewer might stain the soul after it. But naturally

miscalculations sometimes occurred, and sudden death anticipated a

long-delayed baptism. In such cases the friends of the deceased

derived consolation from vicarious baptism. Some one who was persuaded

of the faith of the departed answered for him and was baptized in his

stead.

If Paul meant to say, On the supposition that death ends all, what is

the use of any one being baptized as proxy for a dead friend? he could

not have used words more expressive of his meaning than when he says,

"If the dead rise not at all, why are they then baptized for the

dead?" The only difficulty is, that Paul might thus seem to draw an

argument for a fundamental doctrine of Christianity from a foolish and

unjustifiable practice. Is it possible that a man of such sagacity can

have sanctioned or countenanced so absurd a superstition? But his

alluding to this custom in the way he here does, scarcely implies that

he approved of it. He rather differentiates himself from those who

practised the rite. "What shall _they_ do who are baptized for the

dead?"--referring, probably, to some of the Corinthians themselves. In

any case, the point of the argument is obvious. To be baptized for

those who had died without baptism, and whose future was supposed

thereby to be jeopardized, had at least a show of friendliness and

reason; to be baptized for those who had already passed out of

existence was of course, on the face of it, absurd.

2. The second consequence which flows from the denial of the

resurrection is, that Paul's own life is a mistake. "Why stand we in

jeopardy every hour? What advantageth it me to risk death daily, and

to suffer daily, if the dead rise not?" If there is no resurrection,

he says, my whole life is a folly. No day passes but I am in danger of

death at the hands either of an infuriated mob or a mistaken

magistrate. I am in constant jeopardy, in perils by land and sea, in

perils of robbers, in nakedness, in fasting; all these dangers I

gladly encounter because I believe in the resurrection. But "if in

this life only we have hope in Christ, then we are of all men most

miserable." We lose both this life and that which we thought was to

come.

Paul's meaning is plain. By the hope of a life beyond, he had been

induced to undergo the greatest privations in this life. He had been

exposed to countless dangers and indignities. Although a Roman

citizen, he had been cast into the arena to contend with wild beasts:

there was no risk he had not run, no hardship he had not endured. But

in all he was sustained by the assurance that there remained for him a

rest and an inheritance in a future life. Remove this assurance and

you remove the assumption on which his conduct is wholly built. If

there is no future life either to win or to lose, then the Epicurean

motto may take the place of Christ's promises, "Let us eat and drink,

for to-morrow we die."

It may indeed be said that even if there be no life to come, this life

is best spent in the service of man, however full of hazard and

hardship that service be. That is quite true; and had Paul believed

this life was all, he might still have chosen to spend it, not on

sensual indulgence, but in striving to win men to something better.

But in that case there would have been no deception and no

disappointment. In point of fact, however, Paul believed in a life to

come, and it was because he believed in that life he gave himself to

the work of winning men to Christ regardless of his own pains and

losses. And what he says is that if he is mistaken, then all these

pains and losses have been gratuitous, and that his whole life has

proceeded on a mistake. The life to which he sought to win and for

which he sought to prepare men does not exist.

Besides, it must be acknowledged that the mass of men do sink to a

merely sensual or earthly life if the hope of immortality is removed,

and that Paul did not require to be very guarded in his statement of

this truth. In fact, the words "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we

die" were taken from the history of his own nation. When Jerusalem was

besieged by the Babylonians and no escape seemed possible, the people

gave themselves up to recklessness and despair and sensual indulgence,

saying, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." Similar

instances of the recklessness produced by the near approach of death

may very readily be culled from the history of shipwrecks, of

pestilences, and of besieged cities. In the old Jewish book, the Book

of Wisdom, it finds a very beautiful expression, the following words

being put into the mouth of those who knew not that man is immortal:

"Our life is short and tedious, and in the death of man is no remedy;

neither was any man ever known to return from the grave: for we are

all born at an adventure, and shall be afterwards as though we had

never been; for the breath of our nostrils is as smoke, and a little

spark is the moving of our heart, which, being extinguished, our

bodies will be burnt to ashes, and our spirit vanish as the soft air:

and our name shall be forgotten in time, and no man shall hold our

works in remembrance, and our life shall pass away like the trace of a

cloud, and shall be dispersed as a mist that is driven away with the

beams of the sun, and overcome with the heat thereof.... Come on

therefore, let us enjoy the good things that are present, and let us

speedily use the creatures like as in youth, Let us fill ourselves

with costly wine and ointments, and let no flower of the spring pass

by us; let us crown ourselves with rosebuds before they be withered;

let none of us go without his share of voluptuousness; let us leave

tokens of our joyfulness in every place, for this is our portion and

our lot is this."

It is obvious therefore that this is the conclusion which the mass of

mankind draw from a disbelief in immortality. Convince men that this

life is all, that death is final extinction, and they will eagerly

drain this life of all the pleasure it can yield. We may say that

there are some men to whom virtue is the greatest pleasure: we may say

that to all the denial of appetite and self-indulgence is a more

genuine pleasure than the gratification of it: we may say that virtue

is its own reward, and that irrespective of the future it is right to

live now spiritually and not sensually, for God and not for self: we

may say that the judgments of conscience are pronounced without any

regard to future consequences, and that the highest and best life for

man is a life in conformity to conscience and in fellowship with God,

whether such life is to be long or short, temporal or eternal. And

this is true, but how are we to get men to accept it? Teach men to

believe in a future life and you strengthen every moral sentiment and

every Godward aspiration by revealing the true dignity of human

nature. Make men feel that they are immortal beings, that this life,

so far from being all, is the mere entrance and first step to

existence; make men feel that there is open to them an endless moral

progress, and you give them some encouragement to lay the foundations

of this progress in a self-denying and virtuous life in this world.

Take away this belief, encourage men to think of themselves as

worthless little creatures that come into being for a few years and

are blotted out again for ever, and you destroy one mainspring of

right action in men. It is not that men do noble deeds for the sake of

reward: the hope of reward is scarcely a perceptible influence in the

best of men, or indeed in any men; but in all men trained as we are,

there is an indefinite consciousness that, being immortal creatures,

we are made for higher ends than those of this life, and have

prospects of enjoyments which should make us independent of the

grosser pleasures of the present bodily condition.

Apparently the Corinthians themselves had argued that morality was

quite independent of a belief in immortality. For Paul goes on: "Be

not deceived:" you cannot, however much you may think so, you _cannot_

hear such theories without having your moral convictions undermined

and your tone lowered. This he conveys to them in a common quotation

from a heathen poet--"Evil communications corrupt good manners;" that

is to say, false opinions have a natural tendency to produce

unsatisfactory and immoral conduct. To keep company with those whose

conversation is frivolous or cynical, or charged with dangerous or

false views of things, has a natural tendency to lead us to a style of

conduct we should not otherwise have fallen into. Men do not always

recognise this; they need the warning, "Be not deceived." The

beginnings of conduct are so hidden from our observation, our lives

are formed by influences so imperceptible, what we hear sinks so

insidiously into the mind and mingles so insensibly with our motives,

that we can never say _what_ we have heard without moral

contamination. No doubt it is possible to hold the most erroneous

opinions and yet to keep the life pure; but they are strong and

guileless spirits who can preserve a high moral tone while they have

lost faith in those truths which mainly nourish the moral nature of

the mass of men. And many have found to their surprise and grief that

opinions which they fancied they might very well hold and yet live a

high and holy life, have somehow sapped their moral defences against

temptation and paved the way for shameful falls. We cannot always

prevent doubts, even about the most fundamental truths, from entering

our minds, but we can always refuse to welcome such doubts, or to be

proud of them; we can always be resolved to treat sacred things in a

reverent and not in a flippant spirit, and we can always aim at least

at an honest and eager seeking for the truth.

3. But the most serious consequence which results if there be no

resurrection of the dead, is that in that case Christ is not risen.

"If there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen."

For Paul refused to consider the resurrection of Christ as a miracle

in the sense of its being exceptional and aside from the usual

experience of man. On the contrary, he accepts it as the type to which

every man is to be conformed. Precedent in time, exceptional possibly

in some of its accidental accompaniments, the resurrection of Christ

may be, but nevertheless as truly in the line of human development as

birth, and growth, and death. Christ being man must submit to the

conditions and experience of men in all essentials, in all that

characterises man as human. And, therefore, if resurrection be not a

normal human experience, Christ has not risen. The time at which

resurrection takes place, and the interval elapsing between death and

resurrection, Paul makes nothing of. A child may live but three days,

but it is not on that account any the less human than if he had lived

his threescore years and ten. Similarly the fact of Christ's

resurrection identifies Him with the human race, while the shortness

of the interval elapsing between death and resurrection does not

separate Him from man, for in point of fact the interval will be less

in the case of many.

Both here and elsewhere Paul looks upon Christ as the representative

man, the one in whom we can see the ideal of manhood. If any of our

own friends should veritably die, and after death should appear to us

alive, and should prove his identity by remaining with us for a time,

by showing an interest in the very things which had previously

occupied his thought, and by taking practical steps to secure the

fulfilment of his purposes, a strong probability that we too should

live through death would inevitably be impressed on our mind. But when

Christ rises from the dead this probability becomes a certainty,

because He is the type of humanity, the representative person. As Paul

here says, "He is the firstfruits of them that sleep." His

resurrection is the sample and pledge of ours. When the farmer pulls

the first ripe ears of wheat and carries them home, it is not for

their own sake he values them, but because they are a specimen and

sample of the whole crop; and when God raised Christ from the dead,

the glory of the event consisted in its being a pledge and specimen of

the triumph of mankind over death. "If we believe that Jesus died and

rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with

Him."

And yet while Paul distinctly holds that resurrection is a normal

human experience, he also implies that but for the interposition of

Christ that experience might have been lost to men. It is in Christ

that men are made alive after and through death. As Adam is the source

of physical life that ends in death, so Christ is the source of

spiritual life that never dies. "By man came death, by man came also

the resurrection of the dead." Adam's severance from God and

preference of what was physical, brought man under the powers of the

physical world: Christ by perfect adhesion to God, and constant

conquest of all physical allurements, won life eternal for Himself and

for those who have His Spirit. As a man of genius and wisdom will by

his occupation of a throne enlarge men's ideas of what a king is, and

bring many blessings to his subjects, so Christ by living a human life

enlarged it to its utmost dimensions, compelling it to express His

ideas of life, and winning for those who follow Him entrance into a

larger and higher condition. Resurrection is here represented, not as

an experience which men would have enjoyed had Christ never appeared

on earth, nor as an experience opened to men by God's sovereign

goodwill, but as an experience in some way brought by Christ within

human reach. "By man came death, by man came also the resurrection of

the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made

alive." That is to say, all who are by physical derivation truly

united to Adam, incur the death which by sinning he introduced into

human experience; and similarly all who by spiritual affinity are in

Christ, enjoy the new life which triumphs over death, and which He

won. Adam was not the only man who died, but the firstfruits of a rich

harvest; and so, Christ is not alone in resurrection, but is become

the firstfruits of them that sleep. According to Paul's theology, the

conduct of a man, the sin of Adam, carried in it disastrous

consequences to all connected with him: but equally fruitful in

consequences was the human life, death, and resurrection of Christ.

The death of Adam was the first stroke of that funeral knell that has

ceaselessly sounded through all generations: but the resurrection of

Christ was equally the pledge and earnest that the same experience

would be enjoyed by all "that are Christ's."

Paul is carried on from the thought of the resurrection of "them that

are Christ's," to the thought of the consummation of all things which

this great event introduces and signalizes. This exhibition of the

triumph over death is the signal that all other enemies are now

defeated. "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death;" and this

being destroyed, all Christ's followers being now gathered in and

having entered on their eternal condition, the work of Christ so far

as this world is concerned is over. Having reunited men to God, His

work is done. The provisional government administered by Him having

accomplished its work of bringing men into perfect harmony with the

Supreme Will, it gives place to the immediate and direct government of

God. What is implied in this it is impossible to say. A condition in

which sin shall have no place and in which there shall be no need of

means of reconciliation, a condition in which the work of Christ shall

be no longer needed and in which God shall be all in all, pervading

with His presence every soul and as welcome and natural as the air or

the sunlight,--that is a condition not easy to be imagined. Neither

can we readily imagine what Christ Himself shall be and do when the

term of His mediatorial administration is finished and God is all in

all.

One idea conspicuous in this brief and pregnant passage is that Christ

came to subdue all the enemies of mankind, and that He will continue

His work until His purpose is accomplished. He alone has taken a

perfectly comprehensive view of the obstacles to human happiness and

progress, and He has set Himself to remove these. He alone has

penetrated to the root of all human evil and misery, and has given

Himself to the task of emancipating men from all evil, of restoring

men to their true life, and of abolishing for ever the miseries which

have so largely characterised man's history. Slowly indeed, and

unseen, does His work proceed; slowly, because the work is for

eternity, and because only gradually can moral and spiritual evils be

removed. "It is by no breath, turn of eye, wave of hand, salvation

joins issue with death," but by actual and sustained moral conflict,

by real sacrifice and persistent choice of good, by long trial and

development of individual character, by the slow growth of nations and

the interaction of social and religious influences, by the leavening

of all that is human with the spirit of Christ, that is, with

self-devotement in practical life to the good of men. All this is too

great and too real to be other than slow. The tide of moral progress

in the world has often seemed to turn. Even now, when the leaven has

been working for so long, how doubtful often seems the issue, how

concerned even Christian people are about the merest superficialities

and how little labouring to put down in Christ's name the common

enemies. Can any one who looks at things as they are find it easy to

believe in the final extinction of evil? Whither tend the prevalent

vices, the empty-souled love of pleasure and demand for excitement,

the unyielding, brazen-faced selfishness of the principles of

business if not of the men who engage in it, the diligent propagation

of error, the oppression of the rich and the greed and sensuality that

poverty induces? One needs to be reminded that these things are the

enemies, not only of good men, but of Christ, and that by God's will

He is to defeat them. One needs to be reminded also that to see this

victory accomplished and to have had no share in it will be the sorest

humiliation and the most painful reflection to every generous mind.

However slight be our power, let us strike such blow as we can at the

common enemies which must be destroyed ere the great consummation is

reached.

_THE SPIRITUAL BODY._

"But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what

body do they come? Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not

quickened, except it die: and that which thou sowest, thou sowest

not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of

wheat, or of some other grain: but God giveth it a body as it

hath pleased Him, and to every seed his own body. All flesh is

not the same flesh: but there is one kind of flesh of men,

another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and another of birds.

There are also celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial: but the

glory of the celestial is one, and the glory of the terrestrial

is another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of

the moon, and another glory of the stars: for one star differeth

from another star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the

dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: it

is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory; it is sown in

weakness; it is raised in power: it is sown a natural body; it is

raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a

spiritual body. And so it is written, The first man Adam was made

a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.

Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is

natural; and afterward that which is spiritual. The first man is

of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord from heaven. As

is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the

heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly. And as we have

borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of

the heavenly. Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood

cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption

inherit incorruption. Behold, I show you a mystery; We shall not

all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the

twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall

sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall

be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and

this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible

shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on

immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is

written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy

sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin;

and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which

giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore,

my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding

in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is

not in vain in the Lord."--1 COR. xv. 35-58.

XXIV.

_THE SPIRITUAL BODY._

The proofs of the Resurrection which Paul has adduced are

satisfactory. So long as they are clearly before the mind, we find it

possible to believe in that great experience which will finally give

us possession of the life to come. But after all proof rises doubt

irrepressible, owing to the difficulty of understanding the process

through which the body passes and the nature of the body that is to

be. "Some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body

do they come?" Not always in an unbelieving or scoffing spirit, often

in mere perplexity and justifiable inquisitiveness, will men ask these

questions.

Paul answers both inquiries by referring to analogies in the natural

world. Only by death, he says, does seed reach its designed

development; and the body or form in which seed rises is very

different in appearance from that in which it is sown. These analogies

have their place and their use in removing objections and

difficulties. They are not intended or supposed to establish the fact

of the Resurrection, but only to remove difficulties as to its mode.

By analogy you can show that a certain process or result is not

impossible, you may even create a presumption in its favour, but you

cannot establish it as an actuality. Analogy is a powerful instrument

for removing objections, but utterly weak for establishing positive

truth. Seed lives again after burial, but it does not follow that our

bodies will do so. Seed when it rots away beneath the soil gives birth

to a better thing than that which was sown, but this is no proof that

the same result will follow when our bodies pass through a similar

treatment. But if a man says, as Paul here supposes he may, "Such a

thing as this resurrection you speak of is an unnatural, unheard-of,

and impossible thing," the best reply is to point him to some

analogous process in nature, in which this apparent impossibility or

something very similar is actually brought to pass.

Even outside the circle of Christian thought these analogies in nature

have always been felt to remove some of the presumptions against the

Resurrection and to make room for listening to evidence in its favour.

The transformation of the seed into the plant and the development of

the seed to a fuller life through apparent extinction, the

transformation of the grub into the brilliant and powerful dragon-fly

through a process which terminates the life of the grub--these and

other natural facts show that one life may be continued through

various phases, and that the termination of one form of life does not

always mean the termination of all life in a creature. We need not,

these analogies tell us, at once conclude that death ends all, for in

some visible instances death is only a birth to a higher and freer

life. Neither need we point to the dissolution of the natural body and

conclude that no more perfect body can be connected with such a

process, because in many cases we see a more efficient body disengaged

from the original and dissolving body. Thus far the analogies carry

us. It is doubtful whether they should be pushed further, although

they might seem to indicate that the new body is not to be a new

creation, but is to be produced by virtue of what is already in

existence. The new body is not to be irrespective of what has gone

before, but is to be the natural result of causes already working.

What these causes are, or how the spirit is to impress its character

on the body, we do not know.

It is not impossible, then, nor even quite improbable, that the death

of our present body may set free a new and far more perfectly equipped

body. The fact that we cannot conceive the nature of this body need

not trouble us. Who without previous observation could imagine what

would spring from an acorn or a seed of wheat? To each God gives its

own body. We cannot imagine what our future body, subject to no waste

or decay, can be; but we need not on that account reject as childish

all expectation that such a body shall exist. "All flesh is not the

same flesh." The kind of flesh you now wear may be unfit for

everlasting life, but there may await you as suitable and congenial a

body as your present familiar tenement. Consider the inexhaustible

fertility of God, the endless varieties already existing in nature.

The bird has a body which fits it for life in the air; the fish lives

with comfort in its own element. And the variety already existing does

not exhaust God's resources. We read at present but one chapter in the

history of life, and what future chapters are to unfold who can

imagine? A fertile and inventive man knows no bound to his progress;

will God stand still? Are we not but at the beginning of His works?

May we not reasonably suppose that a truly infinite expansion and

development await God's works? Is it not entirely unreasonable to

suppose that what we see and know is the measure of God's resources?

Paul does not attempt to describe the future body, but contents

himself with pointing out one or two of its characteristics by which

it is distinguished from the body we now wear. "It is sown in

corruption; it is raised in incorruption: it is sown in dishonour; it

is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power: it

is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body." In this body

there is decay, humiliation, weakness, a life that is merely

temporary; in the body that is to be decay gives place to

incorruptibility, humiliation to glory, weakness to power, animal life

to spiritual.

The present body is subject to decay. Not only is it easily injured by

accident and often rendered permanently useless, but it is so

constituted that all activity wastes it; and this waste needs constant

repair. That we may constantly seek this repair, we are endowed with

strong appetites, which sometimes overbear everything else in us and

both defeat their own ends and hinder the growth of the spirit. The

organs by which the waste is repaired themselves wear out, so that by

no care or nourishment can a man make out to live as long as a tree.

But the very decay of this body makes way for one in which there shall

be no waste, no need of physical nourishment, and therefore no need of

strong and overbearing physical appetites. Instead of impeding the

spirit by clamouring to have its wants attended to, it will be the

spirit's instrument. A great part of the temptations of this present

life arise from the conditions in which we necessarily exist as

dependent for our comfort in great measure on the body. And one can

scarcely conceive the feeling of emancipation and superiority which

will possess those who have no anxiety about a livelihood, no fear of

death, no distraction of appetite.

The present body is for similar reasons characterized by "weakness."

We cannot be where we would, nor do what we would. A man may work his

twelve hours, but he must then acknowledge he has a body which needs

rest and sleep. Many persons are disqualified by bodily weakness from

certain forms of usefulness and enjoyment. Many persons also, though

able to do a certain amount of work, do it with labour; their vitality

is habitually low, and they never have the full use of their powers,

but need continually to be on their guard, and go through life

burdened with a lassitude and discomfort more difficult to bear than

passing attacks of pain. In contradistinction to this and to every

form of weakness, the resurrection body will be full of power, able to

accomplish the behests of the will, and fit for all that is required

of it.

But the most comprehensive contrast between the two bodies is

expressed in the words, "It is sown a natural body; it is raised a

spiritual body." A natural body is that which is animated by a human

life and is fitted for this world. "The first man Adam was made a

living soul," or, as we should more naturally say, an animal. He was

made with a capacity for living; and because he was to live upon

earth, he had a body in which this life or soul was lodged. The

natural body is the body we receive at birth, and which is suited for

its own requirements of maintaining itself in life in this world into

which we are born. The soul, or animal life, of man is higher than

that of the other animals, it has richer endowments and capacities,

but it is also in many respects similar. Many men are quite content

with the merely animal life which this world upholds and furnishes.

They find enough to satisfy them in its pleasures, its work, its

affairs, its friendships; and for all these the natural body is

sufficient. The thoughtful man cannot indeed but look forward and ask

himself what is to become of this body. If he turns to Scripture for

light, he will probably be struck with the fact that it sheds no light

whatever on the future of the natural body. Those who are in Christ

enter into possession of a spiritual body, but there is no hint of any

more perfect body being prepared for those who are not in Christ.

The spiritual body, which is reserved for spiritual men, is a body in

which the upholding life is spiritual. The natural life of man both

forms to a human shape and upholds the natural body; the spiritual

body is similarly maintained by what is spiritual in man. It is the

soul, or natural life, of man which gives the body its appetites and

maintains it in efficiency; remove this soul, and the body is mere

dead matter. In like manner it is the spirit which maintains the

spiritual body; and by the spirit is meant that in man which can

delight in God and in goodness. The body we now have is miserable and

useless or happy and serviceable in proportion to its animal vitality,

in proportion to its power to assimilate to itself the nutriment this

physical world supplies. The spiritual body will be healthy or sickly

in proportion to the spiritual vitality that animates it; that is to

say, in proportion to the power of the individual spirit to delight in

God and find its life in Him and in what He lives for.

We have already seen that Paul refuses to consider the resurrection of

Christ as miraculous in the sense of its being unique or abnormal; on

the contrary, he considers resurrection to be an essential step in

normal human development, and therefore experienced by Christ. And now

he enunciates the great principle or law which governs not only this

fact of resurrection, but the whole evolution of God's works: "first

that which is natural, afterward that which is spiritual." It is this

law which we see ruling the history of creation and the history of

man. The spiritual is the culminating point towards which all the

processes of nature tend. The gradual development of what is

spiritual, of will, of love, of moral excellence--this, so far as man

can see, is the end towards which all nature constantly and steadily

is working.

Sometimes, however, it occurs to one to question the law "first that

which is natural, afterward that which is spiritual." If the present

body hinders rather than helps the growth of the spirit, if at last

all Christians are to have a spiritual body, why might we not have had

this body to begin with? What need of this mysterious process of

passing from life to life and from body to body? If it is true that we

are here only for a few years and in the future life for ever, why

should we be here at all? Why might we not at birth have been ushered

into our eternal state? The answer is obvious. We are not at once

introduced into our eternal condition because we are moral creatures,

free to choose for ourselves, and who cannot enter an eternal state

save by choice of our own: first that which is natural, first that

which is animal, first a life in which we have abundant opportunity to

test what appears good and are free to make our choice; then that

which is spiritual, because the spiritual can only be a thing of

choice, a thing of the will. There is no spiritual life or spiritual

birth save by the will. Men can become spiritual only by choosing to

be so. Involuntary, compulsory, necessitated, natural spirituality is,

so far as man is concerned, a contradiction in terms.

Human nature is a thing of immense possibilities and range. On the one

side it is akin to the lower animals, to the physical world and all

that is in it, high and low; on the other side it is akin to the

highest of all spiritual existences, even to God Himself. At present

we are in a world admirably adapted for our probation and discipline,

a world in which, in point of fact, every man does attach himself to

the lower or to the higher, to the present or to the eternal, to the

natural or to the spiritual. And although the results of this may not

be apparent in average cases, yet in extreme cases the results of

human choice are obtrusively apparent. Let a man give himself

unrestrainedly and exclusively to animal life in its grosser forms,

and the body itself soon begins to suffer. You can see the process of

physical deterioration going on, deepening in misery, until death

comes. But what follows death? Can one promise himself or another a

future body which shall be exempt from the pains which unrepented sin

has introduced? Are those who have by their vice committed a slow

suicide to be clothed hereafter in an incorruptible and efficient

body? It seems wholly contrary to reason to suppose so. And how can

their probation be continued if the very circumstance which makes this

life so thorough a probation to us all--the circumstance of our being

clothed with a body--is absent? The truth is, there is no subject on

which more darkness hangs or on which Scripture preserves so ominous a

silence as the future of the body of those who in this life have not

chosen God and things spiritual as their life.

On the other hand, if we consider instances in which the spiritual

life has been resolutely and unreservedly chosen, we see anticipations

here also of the future destiny of those who have so chosen. They may

be crushed by diseases as painful and as fatal as the most flagrant of

sinners endure, but these diseases frequently have the result only of

making the true spiritual life shine more brightly. In extreme cases,

you would almost say, the transmutation of the tortured and worn body

into a glorified body is begun. The spirit seems dominant; and as you

stand by and watch, you begin to feel that death has no relation to

the emotions, and hopes, and intercourse you detect in that spirit.

These, which seem, and are, the very life of the spirit, cannot be

thought of as terminated by a merely physical change. They do not

spring from, nor do they depend upon, what is physical; and it is

reasonable to suppose that they will not be destroyed by it. Looking

at Christ Himself and allowing due impression to be made upon us by

His concernment about the highest, and best, and most lasting things,

by His recognition of God and harmony with Him, by His living in God,

and by His superiority to earthly considerations, we cannot but feel

it to be most unlikely that such a spirit should be extinguished by

bodily death.

This spiritual body we receive through the intervention of Christ. As

from the first man we receive animal life, from the second we receive

spiritual life. "The first man Adam was made a living soul, the last

Adam a quickening spirit. And as we have borne the image of the

earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly." The image of

the first man we have by our natural and physical derivation from him,

the image of the second by spiritual derivation; that is to say, by

our choosing Christ as our ideal and by our allowing His Spirit to

form us. This Spirit is life-giving; this Spirit is indeed God,

communicating to us a life which is at once holy and eternal.

The mode of Christ's intervention is more fully described in the

words, "The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.

But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord

Jesus Christ." Everywhere Paul teaches that it was sin which brought

death upon man; that man would have broken through the law of death

which reigns in the physical world had he not by sin brought himself

under the power of things physical. And this poisonous fang was

pressed in by the Law. The strength of sin is the Law. It is positive

disobedience, the preference of known evil to known good, the

violation of law whether written in the conscience or in spoken

commandments, which gives sin its moral character. The choice of the

evil in presence of the good--it is that which constitutes sin.

The words are no doubt susceptible of another meaning. They could be

used by one who wished to say that sin is that which makes death

painful, which adds terror of future judgment and gloomy forebodings

to the natural pain of death. But it must be owned that this is not so

much in keeping with Paul's usual way of looking at the connection

between death and sin.

Christ's victory over death is thus explained by Godet: "Christ's

victory over death has two aspects, the one relating to Himself, the

other concerning men. He first of all conquered _sin_ in relation to

Himself by denying to it the right of existence in Him, condemning it

to non-existence in His flesh, similar though it was to our sinful

flesh (Rom. viii. 3); and thereby He disarmed _the Law_ so far as it

concerned Himself. His life being the Law in living realization, He

had it for Him, and not against Him. This twofold personal victory was

the foundation of His own resurrection. Thereafter He continued to act

that this victory might extend to us. And first He freed us from the

burden of condemnation which _the Law_ laid on us, and whereby it was

ever interposing between us and communion with God. He recognised in

our name the right of God over the sinner; He consented to satisfy it

to the utmost in His own person. Whoever appropriates this death as

undergone in his room and stead and for himself, sees the door of

reconciliation to God open before him, as if he had himself expiated

all his sins. The separation established by the Law no longer exists;

the Law is disarmed. By that very fact _sin_ also is vanquished.

Reconciled to God, the believer receives Christ's Spirit, who works in

him an absolute breach of will with sin and complete devotion to God.

The yoke of sin is at an end; the dominion of God is restored in the

heart. The two foundations of the reign of death are thus destroyed.

Let Christ appear, and this reign will crumble in the dust for ever."

It is then with joy and triumph Paul contemplates death. Naturally we

shrink from and fear it. We know it only from one side: only from

seeing it in the persons of other men, and not from our own

experience. And what we see in others is necessarily only the darker

side of death, the cessation of bodily life and of all intercourse

with the warm and lively interests of the world. It is a condition

exciting tears, and moaning, and grief in those that remain in life;

and though these tears arise chiefly from our own sense of loss, yet

insensibly we think of the condition of the dead as a state to be

bewailed. We see the sowing in weakness, in dishonour, in corruption,

as Paul says; and we do not see the glory, and strength, and

incorruption of the spiritual body. The dead may be in bright regions

and be living a keener life than ever; but of this we see nothing: and

all we do see is sad, depressing, humiliating.

But to "faith's foreseeing eye" the other side of death becomes also

apparent. The grave becomes the robing room for life eternal. Stripped

of "this muddy vesture of decay," we are there to be clothed with a

spiritual body. Death is enlisted in the service of Christ's people;

and by destroying flesh and blood, it enables this mortal to put on

immortality. The blow which threatens to crush and annihilate all life

breaks but the shell and lets the imprisoned spirit free to a larger

life. Death is swallowed up in victory, and itself ministers to the

final triumph of man. Our instincts tell us that death is critical and

has a determining power on our destinies. We cannot evade it; we may

depreciate or neglect, but we cannot diminish, its importance. It has

its place and its function, and it will operate in each one of us

according to what it finds in us, destroying what is merely animal,

emancipating what is truly spiritual. We cannot as yet stand on the

further side of death, and look back on it, and recognise its kindly

work in us; but we can understand Paul's burst of anticipated triumph,

and with him we can forecast the joy of having passed all doubtful

struggle and anxious foreboding, and of finally experiencing that all

the evils of humanity have been overcome. With a triumph so complete

in view, we can also listen to his exhortation, "Therefore, my beloved

brethren, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of

the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the

Lord."

But if we have any fit conception of the magnitude of the triumph, we

shall also cherish some worthy idea of the reality of the conflict.

Those who have felt the terror of death know that it can be

counterbalanced only by something more than a surmise, a hope, a

longing, only indeed by a fact as solid as itself. And if to them the

resurrection of Christ approves itself as such a fact, and if they can

listen to His voice saying, "Because I live, ye shall live also," they

do feel themselves armed against the graver terrors of death, and

cannot but look forward with some confident hope to a life into which

the ills they have here experienced cannot follow them. But at the

same time, and in proportion as the reality of the future life

quickens hope within them, it must also reveal to them the reality of

the conflict through which that life is reached. By no mere idle

naming of the name of Christ or resultless faith in Him can men pass

from what is natural to what is spiritual. We are summoned to believe

in Christ, but for a purpose; and that purpose is that, believing in

Him as the revelation of God to us, we may be able to choose Him as

our pattern and live His life. It is only what is truly spiritual in

ourselves that can put us in possession of a spiritual body. From

Christ we can receive what is spiritual; and if our belief in Him

prompts us to become like Him, then we may count upon sharing in His

destiny.

This is the permanent incentive of the Christian life. This present

experience of ours leads to a larger, more satisfying experience.

Beyond our horizon there awaits us an endlessly enlarging world.

Death, which seems to bound our view, is really but our real birth to

a fuller, and eternal, and true life. "Therefore be ye steadfast,

unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord." The promptings

of conscience do not delude you; your instinctive hopes will not be

put to shame; your faith is reasonable; there is a life beyond. And no

effort you now put forth will prove vain; no prayer, no earnest

desire, no struggle towards what is spiritual, will fail of its

effect. All that is spiritual is destined to live; it belongs to the

eternal world: and all that you do in the Spirit, all mastery of self,

and the world, and the flesh, all devoted fellowship with God--all is

giving you a surer place and a more abundant entrance into the

spiritual world, for "your labour is not in vain in the Lord."

_THE POOR._

"Now concerning the collection for the saints, as I have given

order to the Churches of Galatia, even so do ye. Upon the first

day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store, as God

hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I come. And

when I come, whomsoever ye shall approve by your letters, them

will I send to bring your liberality unto Jerusalem. And if it be

meet that I go also, they shall go with me. Now I will come unto

you, when I shall pass through Macedonia: for I do pass through

Macedonia. And it may be that I will abide, yea, and winter with

you, that ye may bring me on my journey whithersoever I go. For I

will not see you now by the way; but I trust to tarry a while

with you, if the Lord permit. But I will tarry at Ephesus until

Pentecost. For a great door and effectual is opened unto me, and

there are many adversaries. Now if Timotheus come, see that he

may be with you without fear: for he worketh the work of the

Lord, as I also do. Let no man therefore despise him: but conduct

him forth in peace, that he may come unto me: for I look for him

with the brethren. As touching our brother Apollos, I greatly

desired him to come unto you with the brethren: but his will was

not at all to come at this time; but he will come when he shall

have convenient time. Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you

like men, be strong. Let all your things be done with charity. I

beseech you, brethren, (ye know the house of Stephanas, that it

is the first-fruits of Achaia, and that they have addicted

themselves to the ministry of the saints,) that ye submit

yourselves unto such, and to every one that helpeth with us, and

laboureth. I am glad of the coming of Stephanas and Fortunatus

and Achaicus: for that which was lacking on your part they have

supplied. For they have refreshed my spirit and yours: therefore

acknowledge ye them that are such. The Churches of Asia salute

you. Aquila and Priscilla salute you much in the Lord, with the

Church that is in their house. All the brethren greet you. Greet

ye one another with an holy kiss. The salutation of me Paul with

mine own hand. If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him

be Anathema Maran-atha. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be

with you. My love be with you all in Christ Jesus, Amen."--1 COR.

xvi.

XXV.

_THE POOR._

In closing his letter to the Corinthians, Paul, as usual, explains his

own movements, and adds a number of miscellaneous directions and

salutations. These for the most part relate to matters of merely

temporary interest, and call for no comment. Interest of a more

permanent kind unfortunately attaches to the collection for the poor

Christians of Jerusalem which Paul invites the Corinthians to make.

Several causes had contributed to this poverty; and, among others, it

is not improbable that the persecution promoted by Paul himself had an

important place. Many Christians were driven from their homes, and

many more must have lost their means of earning a livelihood. But it

is likely that Paul was anxious to relieve this poverty, not so much

because it had been partly caused by himself as because he saw in it

an opportunity for bringing more closely together the two great

parties in the Church. In his Epistle to the Galatians Paul tells us

that the three leaders of the Jewish Christian Church--James, Peter,

and John--when they had assured themselves that this new Apostle was

trustworthy, gave him the right hand of fellowship, on the

understanding that he should minister to the Gentiles, "only," he

adds--"only they would that we should remember the poor, the same

which I also was forward to do." Accordingly we find him seeking to

interest the Gentile Churches in their Jewish brethren, and of such

importance did he consider the relief that was to be sent to Jerusalem

that he himself felt it an honour to be the bearer of it. He saw that

no doctrinal explanations were likely to be so fruitful in kindly

feeling and true unity as this simple expression of brotherly

kindness.

In our own day poverty has assumed a much more serious aspect. It is

not the poverty which results from accident, nor even that which

results from wrong-doing or indolence, which presses for

consideration. Such poverty could easily be met by individual charity

or national institutions. But the poverty we are now confronted with

is a poverty which necessarily results from the principle of

competition which is the mainspring of all trade and business. It is

the poverty which results from the constant effort of every man to

secure custom by offering a cheaper article, and to secure employment

by selling his labour at a cheaper rate than his neighbour. So

overstocked is the labour-market that the employer can name his own

terms. Where he wants one man, a hundred offer their services; and he

who can live most cheaply secures the place. So that necessarily wages

are pressed down by competition to the very lowest figure; and

wherever any trade is not strong enough to combine and resist this

constant pressure, the results are appalling. No slaves were ever so

hunger-bitten, no lives were ever more crushed under perpetual and

hopeless toil, than are thousands of our fellow-countrymen and

countrywomen in our own time. It is the fact that in all our large

cities there are thousands of persons who by working sixteen hours a

day earn only what suffices to maintain the most wretched existence.

Every day hundreds of children are being born to a life of hopeless

toil and misery, unrelieved by any of the comforts or joys of the

well-to-do.

The most painful and alarming feature of this condition of things is,

as every one knows, that it seems the inevitable result of the

principles on which our entire social fabric is built. Every

invention, every new method of facilitating business, every

contrivance or improvement in machinery, makes life more difficult to

the mass of men. The very advances made by civilised nations in the

rapid production of needful articles increase the breach between rich

and poor, throwing larger resources into the hands of the few, but

making the lot of the many still darker and more poverty-stricken.

Every year makes the darkness deeper, the distress more urgent. Here

individual charity is unavailing. It is not the relief of one here or

there that is needed; it is the alteration of a system of things which

inevitably produces such results. Individual charity is here a mere

mop in the face of the tide. What is wanted is not larger workhouses

where the aged poor may be sheltered, but such a system as will enable

the working man to provide for himself against old age. What is wanted

is not that the charitable should eke out by voluntary contributions

the earnings of the labouring classes, but that these earnings should

be such as to amply cover all ordinary human wants. "Money given in

aid of wages relieves the employer, not the employed; reduces wages,

not misery." What is wanted is a social system which tends to bring

within the reach of all the comforts and the joys of life which men

legitimately desire, and which does not tend, as our present social

system does, to overload a small number of men with more wealth than

they need, or desire, or can use, while the millions are crushed with

toil and pinched with semi-starvation. What the working classes at

present demand is, not charity, but justice. They do not wish to seem

to be indebted to others for support which they feel they have toiled

for and earned. They require a social system, in which the honest toil

of a lifetime shall be sufficient to secure the toiler and his family

from the dangers and degradation of utter poverty.

That a change is desirable no one who has spent two thoughts on the

subject can doubt. The only question is, What change is desirable and

possible? Is there any organization or social system which could check

the evils resulting from the present competitive system, and secure

that every one who is willing to work should be furnished with

remunerative employment? Socialists are quite convinced that the whole

problem would be solved were private capital to be converted into

co-operative or public capital. Socialism demands that society shall

be the only capitalist, and that all private captains of industry and

capital be abolished. No return is possible to the state of things in

which every man worked by himself with his own hands and at his own

risk, producing his one or two webs, tilling his one or two acres. It

is recognised that far more and better products can be produced when

manufactures are carried on in large factories. But on the socialistic

principle these factories must be owned, not by private capitalists,

but by the State, or at any rate by co-operative societies of some

kind. This is the essence of the demand of Socialism: that "whereas

industry is at present carried on by private capitalists served by

wage-labour, it must in the future be conducted by associated or

co-operating workmen jointly owning the means of production."

The difficulty in pronouncing judgment on such a demand arises from

the fact that very few men indeed have sufficient imagination and

sufficient knowledge of our complicated social system to be able to

forecast the results of so great a change. In the present stage of

human progress personal interest is undoubtedly one of the strongest

incentives to industry, and to this motive the present system of

competition appeals. And although Socialists declare that their system

would not exclude competition, it is difficult to see what field it

would have or at what point it would find its opportunity. Certain

departments of industry are already in the hands of the State or of

co-operative societies, but the organization of all industries and the

management and remuneration of all labour demand a machinery so

colossal that it is feared it would fall to pieces by its own weight.

Still it is possible that ways and means of working a socialistic

scheme may be devised; and it is quite certain that if any system

could be devised which is really workable, and which should at once

save us from the disastrous results of competition and yet evoke all

the energy which competition evokes, that system would forthwith be

adopted in every civilised country.

As yet, however, no such social system has been elaborated. General

principles, ruling ideas, theories, paper plans, have been enunciated

by the score; but, in point of fact, there is no system yet devised

which appeals either to the common-sense and instincts of the masses,

or which stands the criticism of experts. And some of those who have

given greatest attention to social subjects, and have made the

greatest personal sacrifices in behalf of the poor and down-trodden,

are inclined to believe that no such system can be devised, and that

deliverance from the present wretched state of matters is to be found,

not in compulsory enactment, nor even in the sudden adoption of a

different social system, but in the application of Christian

principles to the working of the present competitive system. That is

to say, they believe that true progress here, as elsewhere, begins in

character, not in outward organization, or, as it has been put, that

"the soul of improvement is the improvement of the soul." They

consider that the present system rests on unchangeable laws of human

nature, but that if men worked that system with consideration,

unworldliness, and brotherly kindness, the present evil results would

be avoided. Or they believe that it is at any rate useless to alter

the present system violently by mere legislative enactment or by

revolution, but that if it is to be altered, it can effectually, and

permanently, and beneficially be so only under the pressure and at the

dictation of an improved public opinion.

Appeal is confidently made to the mind of Christ by both parties, both

by those who trust to the enforcement of a socialistic scheme, and by

those who believe only in the social improvement which results from

the improvement of the individual. By the one party it is confidently

affirmed that were Jesus Christ now on earth He would be a communist,

would aim at equalizing all classes and at commuting private property

into a public fund. Communism has been tried to some extent in the

Church. In monastic societies private property is surrendered for the

good of the community, and this practice professes to find its

sanction in the communism of the primitive Church. But the account we

have of that communism shows that it was neither compulsory nor

permanent. It was not compulsory, for Peter reminds Ananias that his

property was his own, and that even after he had sold it he was at

liberty to do what he pleased with the proceeds. And it was not

permanent nor universal, for here we find that Paul had to ask

contributions for the relief of the poor Christians of Jerusalem;

while we see that there were rich and poor in the same congregations,

and that such duties as almsgiving and hospitality, which could not be

practised without private means, were enjoined upon Christians. It is

also obvious that many of the duties inculcated in the Epistles of

Paul could not be discharged in a society in which all classes were

levelled.

It is perhaps of more importance to observe that in probably the most

critical period of the world's history our Lord took no part in any

political movement; nay, He counted it a temptation of the devil when

He saw how much inducement there was to head some popular party and

compete with kings or statesmen. He was no agitator, although He lived

in an age abounding in abuses. And this limitation of His work was due

to no superficial view of social movements nor to any mere shrinking

from the rougher work of life, but to His perception that His own task

was to touch what was deepest in man, and to lodge in human nature

forces which ultimately would achieve all that was desirable. The cry

of the poor against the oppressor was never louder than in His

lifetime; slavery was universal: no country on earth enjoyed a free

government. Yet our Lord most carefully abstained from following in

the steps of a Judas the Gaulanite, and from intermeddling with

social or State affairs. He came to found a kingdom, and that kingdom

was to exist on earth, and was to be the ideal condition of mankind;

but He trusted to move and mould society by regenerating the

individual and by teaching men to seek in the first place not what

"the Gentiles seek"--happy outward conditions--but the kingdom of God,

the rule of God's Spirit in the heart, and the righteousness that

comes of that. It was by the regeneration of individuals society was

to be regenerated. The leaven which contact with Him imparted to the

individual would touch and purify the whole social fabric.

In any case the duty of individual Christians is plain. Whether

needless and unjust poverty is to be relieved by social revolution or

by the happier and surer, if slower, method of leavening society with

the spirit of Christ, it is the part of every Christian man to inform

himself of the state of his fellow-citizens and to bring himself in

some practically helpful way into connection with the wretchedness in

the midst of which we are living. To shut our eyes to the squalor, and

vice, and hopelessness which poverty too often brings, to seclude

ourselves in our own comfortable homes and shut out all sounds and

signs of misery, to "abhor the affliction of the afflicted," and

practically to deny that it is better to visit the house of mourning

than the house of feasting--this is simply to furnish proof that we

know nothing of the spirit of Christ. We may find ourselves quite

unable to rectify abuses on a large scale or to discern how poverty

can be absolutely prevented, but we can do something to brighten some

lives; we can consider those whose hard and bare lives make our

comforts cheap; we can ask ourselves whether we are quite free from

blood-guiltiness in using articles which are cheap to us because wrung

out of underpaid and starving hands. It is true that anything we can

do may be but a scratching of the surface, the lifting of a bucketful

out of an overflowing flood which should be stopped at the source;

still we must do what we can, and all knowledge of social facts and

kindly feeling and action towards the oppressed are helpful, and on

the way to a final settlement of our social condition. Let every

Christian give his conscience fair play, let him ask himself what

Christ would do in his circumstances, and this final settlement will

not be long postponed. But so long as selfishness rules, so long as

the world of men is like a pit full of loathsome creatures, each

struggling to the top over the heads and crushed bodies of the rest,

no scheme will alter or even disguise our infamy.

The method of collecting which Paul recommends was in all probability

that which he himself practised. "Upon the first day of the week let

every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him, that

there be no gatherings when I come." This verse has sometimes been

quoted as evidence that the Christians met for worship on Sundays as

we do. Manifestly it shows nothing of the kind. It is proof that the

first day of the week had a significance, _probably_ as the day of our

Lord's resurrection, possibly only for some trade reasons now unknown.

It is expressly said that each was to lay up "by him"--that is, not in

a public fund, but at home in his own purse--what he wished to give.

But what is chiefly to be noticed is that Paul, who ordinarily is so

free from preciseness and form, here enjoins the precise method in

which the collection might best be made. That is to say, he believed

in methodical giving. He knew the value of steady accumulation. He

laid it on each man's conscience deliberately to say how much he would

give. He wished no one to give in the dark. He did not carry out in

the letter, even if he knew, the precept, "Let not thy right hand know

what thy left hand doeth." He knew how men seem to themselves to be

giving much more than they are if they do not keep an exact account of

what they give, how some men shrink from knowing definitely the

proportion they give away. And therefore he presents it as a duty we

have each to discharge to determine what proportion we can give away,

and if God prospers us and increases our incomes, to what extent we

should increase our personal expenditure and to what extent use for

charitable objects the additional gain.

The Epistle concludes with an overflowing expression of affection from

Paul and his friends to the Church of Corinth; but suddenly in the

midst of this there occur the startling words, "If any man love not

the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema." "Anathema" means

accursed. What induced Paul to insert these words just here, it is

difficult to see. He had taken the manuscript out of the hand of

Sosthenes and written the salutation with his own hand, and apparently

still with his own hand adds this startling sentence. Probably his

feeling was that all his lessons of charity and every other lesson he

had been inculcating would be in vain without love to the Lord Jesus.

All his own love for the Corinthians had sprung from this source; and

he knew that their love for the Jews would prove hollow unless it too

was animated by this same principle, They are serious words for us

all--serious because our own hearts tell us they are just. If we do

not love the Lord Jesus, what good thing can we love? If we do not

love Him who is simply and only good, must there not be something

accidental, superficial, unsafe, about our love for anything or any

one besides? If we have not learned by loving Him to love all that is

worthy, may we not justly fear that we are yet in danger of losing

what life is meant to teach and to give? Trying to reach the truth

about ourselves, do we find that we have attained to see and to love

what is worthy? Can we say with something of Paul's conviction and

joy, "Maranatha"--"The Lord is at hand"? Is it the true stay of our

spirit that Christ rules, and will in His own time reconcile all

things by His own spirit?

_Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury._