When it was first heard, I suppose that the disciples and the women
apprehended the salutation only in its most outward form, and that
all other thoughts were lost in the mere rapture of the sudden
change from the desolate sense of loss to the glad consciousness of
renewed possession. When the women clung to His feet on that Easter
morning, they had no thought of anything but--'we clasp Thee again,
O Soul of our souls.' But then, as time went on, the meaning and
blessedness and far-reaching issues of the Resurrection became more
plain to them. And I think we can see traces of the process, in the
development of Christian teaching as presented in the Acts of the
Apostles and in the Epistles. Peter in his early sermons dwells on
the Resurrection all but exclusively from one point of view--viz.,
as being the great proof of Christ's Messiahship. Then there came by
degrees, as is represented in the same Peter's letter, and
abundantly in the Apostle Paul's, the recognition of the light which
the Resurrection of Jesus Christ threw upon immortality; as a
prophecy and a pattern thereof. Then, when the historical fact had
become fully accepted and universally diffused, and its bearings
upon men's future had been as fully apprehended as is possible here,
there came, finally, the thought that the Resurrection of Jesus
Christ was the symbol of the new life, which from that risen Lord
passed into all those who loved and trusted Him.
Now, in all these three aspects--as proof of Messiahship, as the
pattern and prophecy of immortality, and as the symbol of the better
life which is accessible for us, here and now--the Resurrection of
Jesus Christ stands for us even more truly than for the rapturous
women who caught His feet, or for the thankful men who looked upon
Him in the upper chamber, as the source of peace and of joy.
For, dear brethren, therein is set forth for us the Christ whose
work is thereby declared to be finished and acceptable to God, and
all sorrow of sin, all guilt, all disturbance of heart and mind by
reason of evil passions and burning memories of former iniquity, and
all disturbance of our concord with God, are at once and for ever
swept away. If Jesus Christ was 'declared to be the Son of God with
power by His Resurrection from the dead,' and if in that
Resurrection, as is most surely the case, the broad seal of the
divine acceptance is set to the charter of our forgiveness and
sonship by the blood of the Cross, then joy and peace come to us
from Him and from it.
Again, the resurrection of Jesus Christ sets Him forth before us as
the pattern and the prophecy of immortal life. This Samson has taken
the gates of the prison-house on His broad shoulders and carried
them away, and now no man is kept imprisoned evermore in that
darkness. The earthquake has opened the doors and loosened every
man's bonds. Jesus Christ hath risen from the dead, and therein not
only demonstrated the certainty that life subsists through death,
and that a bodily life is possible thereafter, but hath set before
all those who give the keeping of their souls into His hands the
glorious belief that 'the body of their humiliation shall be'
'changed into the likeness of the body of His glory, according to
the working whereby He is able even to subdue all things unto
Himself.' Therefore the sorrows of death, for ourselves and for our
dear ones, the agitation which it causes, and all its darkness into
which we shrink from passing, are swept away when He comes forth
from the grave, serene, radiant, and victorious, to die no more, but
to dispense amongst us His peace and His joy.
And, again, the risen Christ is the source of a new life drawn from
Him and received into the heart by faith in His sacrifice and
Resurrection and glory. And if I have, deep-seated in my soul,
though it may be in imperfect maturity, that life which is hid with
Christ in God, an inward fountain of gladness, far better than the
effervescent, and therefore soon flat, waters of Greek or earthly
joy, is mine; and in my inmost being dwells a depth of calm peace
which no outward disturbance can touch, any more than the winds that
rave along the surface of the ocean affect its unmoved and unsounded
abysses. Jesus Christ comes to thee, my brother, weary, distracted,
care-laden, sin-laden, sorrowful and fearful. And He says to each of
us from the throne what He said in the upper room before the Cross,
and on leaving the grave after it, 'My joy will remain in you, and
your joy shall be full. My peace I leave to you, My peace I give
unto you; not as the world giveth, give I unto you.'