The Hope of the Resurrection.
The resurrection is one of the most precious doctrines of divine revelation. It is the hope of the believer, and is properly termed a “blessed hope.” Titus 2 : 13. It was fearlessly expressed by Paul, before Felix (Acts 24 : 15) and before Agrippa (Acts 26 : 6–8). He dwelt upon it in all his epistles to the churches, besides preaching it everywhere. Its importance to him appears in his language to the Corinthians: “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.” After fully authenticating the resurrection of Christ, he predicates that of the believer thereupon, affirming that “if Christ be not risen their faith is vain.” The child of God lays hold of the life beyond, realizing that “it is not all of life to live;” but not so the enemy of God. Ask him “What is your life?” and he can only say: “It is even a vapor that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away;” or as the feeble flame of a lamp that a breath of air extinguishes. But ask the true child of God, “What is your life?” and mark the expression of his features as he replies: “When Christ who is our life shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.” But do you not enjoy life now? “O yes; I live, yet not I but Christ liveth in me; and the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God; but I shall live hereafter in a higher, more blessed, and more perfect sense; for I know that my Redeemer liveth, and because he lives I shall live also.” This is the language of faith—that faith that enabled a child of God when about to die to compose this as his own epitaph: “The inn of a traveler on his way to the New Jerusalem;” and another to say of the death and burial of a traveler: “So they laid the pilgrim in a chamber whose window opened toward the sunrising, to sleep until the break of day;” and another to say of himself: “Then let the worms demand their prey,
The greedy grave my dust consume;
With joy I drop my mouldering clay,
And rest till my Redeemer come;
On Christ, my life, in death rely,
Secure that I can never die.” And yet another, speaking of rest in the tomb, was led to remark: “I am not afraid to lie down to sleep even in a dungeon, when I know that a dear friend in whom I trust, holds the key, and that he will not only watch over me during sleep but unlock the door as morning breaks, and permit me to go forth a free man. And so I am not afraid to lie down in the tomb when I can do so with the assurance that “Christ, my Redeemer, lives
And e’er from the skies
Will watch my sleeping dust
Till he shall bid it rise.” The British Workman referring to a seed found in the hand of a mummy two thousand years old, which, when planted, bloomed into a beautiful flower, thus beautifully expresses the gospel hope: “Two thousand years ago a flower
Bloomed brightly in a far-off land;
Two thousand years ago its seed
Was placed within a dead man’s hand.
Before the Saviour came to earth,
That man had lived, and loved, and died,
And even in that far-off time,
The flower had spread its fragrance wide.
Suns rose and set, years came and went;
The dead hand kept its treasure still;
Nations were born and turned to dust
While life was hidden in that shell.
The shriveled hand is robbed at last,
The seed is buried in the earth,
When lo! the life long hidden there
Into a glorious flower bursts forth.
Just such a plant as that which grew
From such a seed when buried low,
Just such a flower in Egypt bloomed
And died two thousand years ago.
And will not He who watched the seed
And kept the life within the shell,
When those he loves are laid to rest,
Watch o’er their buried dust as well?
And will he not from ’neath the sod
Cause something glowing to arise?
Aye, though it sleep two thousand years,
Yet all that buried dust shall rise.
Just such a face as greets you now,
Just such a form as here we wear,
Only more glorious far will rise
To meet the Saviour in the air.
Then will I lay me down in peace,
When called to leave this vale of tears,
For in my flesh shall I see God,
E’en though I sleep two thousand years.”