02.03. The Basis of Our Hope

THE BASIS OF OUR HOPE.

Future existence is not future life in the full and blessed sense in which the phrase is used by our Savior. Even the wicked may exist "where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched." Nor is existence here on earth recognized by him as life. In him was life, and in him The Life walked and moved in a world that was lying dead in trespasses and sins, which he invited to him in order that he might have life. Those who received him were born to a new life received from him, and henceforth were moved by the power of an eternal hope. For them eternal life had begun, and what we call death was only a transit to a higher stage of its existence in which all the ills of "this present evil world" were left behind.

Hence the intimations of nature that the spirit of man survives the passage of death fall short, when we seek proof from these sources of the blissful immortality which is the promised inheritance of the Christian. If I were asked for the basis on which our hope of a happy state in the eternal world rests, and was required to give the answer in a single word, that word would be CHRIST. Upon him hang all our hopes. In him all proofs center. He is the Light that illumines not only this world, but which casts its rays through the gloom that gathers around the mysteries of death, and reveals a Better Land. To me the future is not hopeless death, nor even a shadowy and uncertain a existence, but a joyous and inspiring hope, because I believe with all my heart that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. It is he "who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light." When the stone was rolled from the door of the sepulcher in which the body was lain it was rolled from the hopes of humanity, and when he came forth living it was not only a triumph over death, but the beginning of a new era, the birth of a new world.

I shall not take space to discuss the proofs of the resurrection of the crucified Lord. They have been ably considered in other portions of the series to which I am only contributing a part. It is sufficient now to quote the testimony of Dr. Thomas Arnold, of Rugby, Regius Professor of History in the University of Oxford, and himself the author of a number of valuable historical works, who declares: "I have been used for many years to study the history of other times, and to examine and weigh the evidence of those who have written about them; and I know of no one fact in the history of mankind which is proved by better and fuller evidence of every sort, to the mind of a fair inquirer, than that Christ died and rose again from the dead."

"Why should it be thought incredible that one should rise from the dead?" Indeed, this is far less incredible than to believe that the church which rose out of the tomb of Christ, based upon faith in his resurrection, was based upon a delusion; that the suffering martyrs, who gave up all that the world values, and endured every trial and sorrow that causes the world to shrink and shudder, were either deceived by the conviction that they had seen the Risen Lord, or were deceivers; and that Saul of Tarsus, the bitterest of persecutors, was transformed into the saintly Paul, the apostle, the apostle of prisons, stripes, weariness, painfulness, hunger, cold and nakedness, by an optical illusion! The resurrection of Jesus Christ must be accepted as a historical fact, unless we plant ourselves upon the dictum of Hume, accepted by Huxley, that "no testimony can prove a miracle."

Yet, if the resurrection of Jesus stood alone it would not furnish an impregnable basis for our hope. If the voice of Jesus had remained silent concerning the wonders of the divine love, and there had no promise of eternal life for man fallen from his lips, we would still be left in doubt concerning our future. Indeed, the resurrection did not take place, primarily, in order to demonstrate that we should live beyond the tomb. It was the primary purpose of the resurrection to demonstrate that the crucified Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God. The Sanhedrim condemned him to death for blasphemy because, in reply to their own question, he had affirmed his high claims. When they had nailed him to the cross, Sanhedrists, populace, and Roman soldiers, all taunted him with his inability to prove that he was the Christ by coming down. And when the lifeless body was sealed in the tomb, they felt that the demonstration was complete, that he was either a deluded fanatic or an impostor. So it would have been had the tomb held him. Had he seen corruption, the lot of mortality, his very name would have been forgotten. But he had affirmed, "On this rock," the rock of the fundamental truth that he is the Christ, the Son of God, "I will build my church, and the gates of Hades (the great unseen world of death) shall not prevail against it." The Jewish nation declared that these gates should prevail, and that question between the words of Christ and the Sanhedrim was at issue during the three days that the stone closed the door of the sepulcher, and of human hopes. But on that glad Sunday morning the stone was rolled away! The sepulcher was empty! The Lord is risen indeed! The accounts of the women were not idle tales. Simon hath seen him! Nay, all have seen him but the skeptical Thomas. Nay, one week later, Thomas, convinced, exclaims, "My Lord and my God!" Five hundred disciples see him at once, and last of all, as one born out of due time, the raging persecutor sees him on the way to Damascus. Then on Pentecost, a mighty power descends on the little band of saints, and as Israel gathered in wonder, Peter declared to the men of Judea and Jerusalem that "Him whom ye have taken, and with wicked hands crucified and slain, God hath raised, having loosed the pangs of death, because it was not possible that he be holden of it. . . . This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses. . . . . God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ." The gates of Hades did not prevail against this grand truth, the foundation of the church. The resurrection demonstrates that Jesus, the condemned, the crucified, is both Lord and Christ. But if Lord and Christ, the seal of the living God is placed upon every word that has fallen from his tongue. When he, in the flesh, uttered those words in which Omnipotence seemed to speak with human lips, "I am the Resurrection and the Life;" "I am come that ye may have life, and have it more abundantly;" "Because I live, ye shall live also;" "He that liveth and believeth in me shall never die;" "They that are in their graves shall hear the voice of the Son of Man, and they that hear shall live;" and when he declared that in the last day he should say to his followers, "Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you;" when he uttered these and many other words equally gracious, it was the voice of him who holds the Keys of Life, of Death and Hades, which spoke. When he, whom the resurrection demonstrates to be the "Brightness of the Father’s glory," speaks, we who have heard him have heard the voice of the Father, whose offspring we are. And we know that if we have fellowship with his life and death that we shall have the fellowship of his resurrection also. He is Life; he is Immortality. Because he lives we shall live also.

Yet one more sweet thought full of hope comes from the demonstration that Jesus came into the world to show us, not only the Father’s will, but the Father Himself. In him we behold how the Father loves us. We hear it in his words. He tells us that if we want a definition of God, it is comprehended in the one word LOVE. Yet love will never let what is loved die if it can have its will. He who loves a flower or a singing bird, is saddened if it dies. A mother’s love would hold back her child as it is drawn towards the gates of death, and would even give her own life that it might live. Love would always dower the loved one with life. Hence, when we look up to the great God, and know as we see his face that we are gazing upon the depths of an utterable love, then there comes to us the unfaltering conviction that the Omnipotent Father is not deaf to his children’s cry, will not thrust back the hands extended in supplication, and that even of his own will, because love is not death, but life, he will dower them with immortality and eternal peace.