"Man," is so complex that all philosophy and all theology and all that is valuable in biology is occupied in exploring it. And so, when we assert the resurrection of Jesus, we are introduced to an event which has more suggestion in it and more meaning for you and me than almost any other fact one could name. One of the sure signs of a man having yielded himself to be led and guided by the Holy Spirit of God is this, that these Scriptures become increasingly illuminating to him. They are like springs that never run dry, but supply fresh, cool water every day.

Now as we look on, this Easter morning, at the resurrection fact, the first thought that suggests itself is this: That the resurrection is a revelation of man's capabilities. The truth about man and his destiny can come only through a perfect life. I need not stay to argue that. If you think over it long enough, the statement will verify itself. Christ's life, therefore, is the only adequate and authoritative revelation as to man and the possibilities of his nature ever given to the world. Respecting every other life lived here, death seemed to have dominion over it. It seemed to end. This life of Jesus did not end. It continued. It was manifested under other and higher conditions. The identical Jesus reappeared, and yet clothed with new powers and possibilities. The identical Jesus, yet reembodied. The identical Jesus, yet no longer imprisoned, as we are, in this "body of humiliation." His life did not end. It kept on and on and under higher and nobler conditions. He could make himself visible. He could

retire into invisibility. There was a marvelous change in him and that change was a prophecy of what all his disciples would be beyond the event we call death.

This revelation inspired them for their work. It took away the fear of death. To be absent from the body would be to be as the Lord. That made them rather court martyrdom than fear it. Whenever you see a change as great as this come over men, something must be found to account for it— something sufficient. All the evangelists and apostles give us about the events associated with the resurrection of Jesus is sufficient to account for this marvelous change in feeling and thought and life. Man does not die when he disappears from our view. He lives on in a new and more glorious embodiment. "If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body." There are hidden capabilities in man which never develop into actualities so long as he is confined within the limitations of this mortal body. Even science teaches us that.

One illustration will suffice. Our power of hearing is confined within a certain range of aerial vibrations. Above and below that range we cannot hear. There are sounds in creation far more exquisite than we ever hear, above and below the range to which we are limited. There is ravishing music which we have not the competence to detect. Above and below the limit of our hearing faculty all is, so far as we are concerned, silence. Death means the removal of these limitations. It meant that in the case of Jesus of Nazareth. And doubtless it will

mean something similar in the experience of all who are Christ's.

A legitimate inference from all this seems to me to be that in regard to the question of personal immortality the Christian disciple has an immense advantage. So far as he receives his divine Master as an infallible teacher on life questions, he has full assurance of the continuance of his life into higher conditions. They who doubt and distrust have not, and cannot have, that full assurance. The utmost that mere reasoning has ever attained to has been a high probability. But Paul the apostle had full assurance and John the divine had full assurance and the impulsive and heroic Peter had full assurance. And all men in all ages who have done the will of Christ and have made a full surrender of themselves to be ruled by Christ, have partaken of this full assurance. Our divine Master brought life and immortality to light. It was in twilight before he brought it into broad daylight and made it a constituent part of the gospel message. The resurrection of Christ was a revelation of the capabilities which lie slumbering in the nature of man.

In the second place, the resurrection of Jesus was a revelation of the power of God. This is the aspect under which it is presented to us in several memorable utterances of the apostles. Let us recall one or two: "That I may know him and the power of his resurrection," was the apostle Paul's aspiration. And in that most suggestive and meaty of all his letters the one to the Ephesians — he writes of "that working of the strength of his might

which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead and made him to sit at his right hand in the heavenly places.'

When I have been troubled in mind and heart over the fearful cruelties which have been perpetrated in this world by violent and merciless men, a certain word of our Lord has often come to my memory, and out of it I have got no end of comfort. It is this: "Be not afraid of them who kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do." Has it ever occurred to you how much of the wickedness of life is made possible through our being associated for a certain number of years with a material body? There is a limit to all these crimes. When the old Palestinian Jews crucified Jesus, they had done their utmost and worst. When men martyred Peter and Paul, they had done their worst. There was "no more that they could do." When I read the history of wars and all the diabolic cruelties attending them, such a passage as this I have read comes to my relief and saves my faith in God. And the resurrection of Jesus, with all its attendant circumstances, is an enormous comfort to my staggering faith, for, though it does not clear away the fog which hangs over much of our human life, it reveals that to all forms of diabolic cruelty there are limitations which are soon reached. There is an end. There is an "after this." There is only so much which bad men can do.

Our divine Master had lived within the limitations of our human life. He had endured all those humiliations which depress and degrade sensitive

souls. He had been treated with the most supercilious contempt. He had known what it was to be betrayed by a Judas. He had seen a fickle populace, on whom he had rained blessings, turn upon him in disdain: crying, "Hosanna!" one day, and "Crucify him!" the next. He had been mocked by Herod; scourged by Pilate; bedecked with the laughing malignity of the thorn crown; spat upon by a ribald soldiery—all the most dreadful human experiences had been his. But it was all over. He had proved that all the combined powers of wickedness were weak-contemptibly weak-compared with the power of God. He was lifted into a state beyond the power of persecution. Scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees, Pilate, Herod, Caiaphas no longer could these touch him. He was beyond their power. All his weary life was vindicated. He was proved to be what he asserted himself to be.

If we had no gospel of the resurrection to preach, we should have no gospel at all. If Calvary ended the life of Jesus, over it would hang an impenetrable cloud whose Stygian darkness would turn our earth into a hell. The resurrection of our divine Master is an imperious necessity to belief in all and everything which went before it. In no single fact of it was the life of Jesus a fanaticism or a mistake. It is an evidence that there is a power stronger than disease, stronger than death, stronger than hell, stronger than all the confederated diabolisms. of evil men. I don't wonder that bad men should want death to be the end of all things, because "after that they have no more that they can do."