SERMON XII.

THE POWER OF CHRIST'S RESURRECTION.

"That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection; being made conformable unto his death."-PHIL. iii., 10.

O Paul, everything in christianity means power; and all power exists for one end, and is measured by one

standard. The point of unity for all diversities is moral; the moral world is the foundation and interpretation of all things. Show me, Paul would say, what has influence over mind, soul, over that which is within the man and makes the man, and I can recognize that as power. More so than the lightning, that rends the forest oak, or the earthquake, that tears the granite rock. Power over material things is nothing; power over living minds is something wonderful, and affects the whole universe. Since the spiritual difference everywhere is between truth and falsehood-or good and evil-power over mind is measured and known only in this light. To show me power, you must point me to something that can diminish falsehood and increase truth-something that can aid the right and defeat

the wrong. All power is building up a universe of moral order and loveliness.

Had anyone pointed Paul to a powerful preacher, he would have asked directly, can he subdue sins, can he strengthen men's love of right-only in that case has he any power. So of all systems and teachings, what can they do morally among living men?

Paul calls the law weak-and yet according to the ordinary thoughts of men, it is far stronger than the gospel -it can imprison and fine, wound and kill-while the gospel stands patiently by, only pleading or weeping. True; but when you have thus used a man's body, where is the evidence of power? That only is strong which can make a living man intellectually strong. Perhaps the pleading and weeping of a gospel can do that better than the bonds and fines and dungeons of a law. Therefore Paul says the law is weak, and the grace of God, in Christ Jesus, is omnipotent.

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You cannot wonder that Paul thus looked at it, when consider his life. Power had been revealed to him inwardly-spiritually-all along. He had gone down to Damascus, armed with all the authority and force that man could confer. All that had been reduced to less than nothing, by revelations of truth to his soul. He had gone all his life long afterwards without any religious society to support him, or a single friend to back him, fighting against iniquities and lies, in the simple name of the invisible God -a man of a frail physical constitution, persecuted, beaten, imprisoned, stoned almost to death, but keeping the light of truth clear in his own soul, and living to see his convictions triumph over all this, and prove themselves stronger than Jewish bigotry or Roman authority. To him

what could power mean, but a thing quite intellectual, moral?

This is the key to everything Paul says. Clearly apprehended, it takes the most difficult of Paul's writings out of the hand of theological jugglers, and places them in a most simple and intelligible light. Moral truth, goodness, righteousness, were the ruling passion with Paul; power meant whatever could promote these. When, then, he speaks of the power of Christ's resurrection, he means such power as this. Paul could not look at it as we too often do, as an outward marvel, presented to the senses. As such, it would have no special interest to him. Its power was a power over our minds-in governing our thoughts and feelings, and so moulding our characters.

As such, we have now to study it. It will be readily apparent that its power in this sense, like the power of the cross, is entirely dependent upon our way of apprehending it. Although it might be difficult to turn it into a positive source of weakness, it is unfortunately too easy to miss its power. General as is the belief in the resurrection of Christ, it is not clear that that belief, with most of us, makes the practice of righteousness easier, or that it produces that state of mind to which righteousness is a necessity. That, however, was its influence upon Paul, and I wish to examine the ground of its being such.

First. It is quite clear from all Paul's teachings that he in some way connected the resurrection of Christ with our resurrection; and hence it was to him a victory over death, such as to set us perfectly free from those fears that are our greatest source of weakness.

But in what way does Christ's resurrection stand connected with ours? Is it a legitimate argument to say

-because Christ rose from the dead, therefore you and I shall? Is it more so than to say-because Elijah went up to heaven in a chariot of fire, therefore you and I may; or because God took Enoch from the earth, without the ordinary process of dying, therefore he may take us? If Christ's resurrection is to be a guarantee for ours, we must see some ground on which we so regard it. It is in the perception of that ground that, in part at least, its power lies.

Now it is very certain that such ground cannot be seen in our belief in Christ as a divine person. For to whatever extent the divinity of Christ places him above us, it becomes very obvious that his rising superior to death and the grave is not a reason for our doing so; but rather the reverse. So too, in whatever degree Christ's whole life and course are unlike ours, exceptional, severed from a strictly human life and course the argument from one to the other must fail us. This seems to me so clear that I cannot imagine one word needed to urge it. So long as our view is confined to this, Christ's resurrection has no power over us. Nor is it possible to put it on the ground that Christ came into this world as our Redeemer. That might be a reason for our living beyond the grave, if such life were proved to be a part of redemption; which is precisely the point we want proved. It could be no reason why Christ's resurrection should guarantee ours. Because Christ having finished the work of redemption, would, as a matter of course, in some way, return to heaven; which need not be any example for us.

On what grounds, then, have we a right to say-because Christ rose, I shall; for Paul certainly claims that right? There is but one intelligible ground.

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If Christ has so identified himself with us, as to make his life strictly, and in all aspects of it, a true representation of human life; if when I look on Christ, I can say: That is the ideal, the model of every true man's life, then it follows, undoubtedly, that whatever step Christ has taken, I shall be justified in feeling, that also belongs to my existence and is mine, as a follower of my Lord and Saviour. Or to put it in another light; if Christ, in his life here, has shown me the life I am to live-the life I shall live, as one of his disciples; and if then his resurrection is a necessary sequel to his life, my resurrection is, for the same reason, an equally necessary sequel to my life; the conclusion then assumes a moral certainty.

This is just how the apostles all regarded it. They had so intense a feeling of the identity of life in Christ and in us-of the fact that Christ had been the true man, living the true human life-of the fact that christianity meant nothing less than entering into that life in every aspect and particular of it; that they would not have understood Christ being anything that they might not; that Christ having won and attained any good was a morally certain reason for their sharing the same. Moreover the resurrection of Christ was to them the sequel, the moral necessity of his life. To have lived Christ's life, and not to rise from death, appeared to them an impossibility. For the clearest reason.

They saw death (in its true light) as subjection to low, material, sensual influences. It was the triumph of materialism over spiritual being. For death is solely a material change, and cannot seriously affect us, except as we are under the dominion of matter. That subjection to matter they regarded as the evidence of spiritual