The Resurrection Credible

A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, AUGUST 25, 1872,

BY C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

"Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should
raise the dead?" Acts 26:8.

CONCERNING the souls of our believing friends who have departed this
life we suffer no distress, we feel sure that they are where Jesus is
and behold His Glory according to our Lord's own memorable prayer. We
know but very little of the disembodied state, but we know quite enough
to rest certain beyond all doubt that–

"They are supremely blest,

Have done with sin,

And care, and woe,

And with their Savior rest."

Our main trouble is about their bodies, which we have committed to the
dark and lonesome grave. We cannot reconcile ourselves to the facts
that their dear faces are being stripped of all their beauty by the
fingers of decay and that all the insignia of their manhood should be
fading into corruption. It seems hard that the hands and feet and all
the goodly fabric of their noble forms should be dissolved into dust
and broken into an utter ruin.

We cannot stand at the grave without tears–even the perfect Man could
not restrain His weeping at Lazarus' tomb. It is a sorrowful thought
that our friends are dead, nor can we ever regard the grave with love.
We cannot say that we take pleasure in the catacomb and the vault. We
still regret, and feel it natural to do so, that so dreadful a ban has
fallen upon our race as that it should be "appointed unto all men once
to die." God sent it as a penalty and we cannot rejoice in it. The
glorious doctrine of the resurrection is intended to take away this
cause of sorrow! We need have no trouble about the body any more than
we have concerning the soul.

Faith being exercised upon immortality relieves us of all trembling as
to the spirits of the just. And the same faith, if exercised upon
resurrection, will, with equal certainty, efface all hopeless grief
with regard to the body, for though apparently destroyed, the body will
live again–it has not gone to annihilation. That very frame which we
lay in the dust shall but sleep there for awhile and, at the trump of
the archangel, it shall awaken in superior beauty, clothed with
attributes unknown to it while here. The Lord's love to His people is a
love towards their entire manhood–He chose them not as disembodied
spirits, but as men and women arrayed in flesh and blood. The love of
Jesus Christ towards His chosen is not merely an affection for their
better nature but towards that, also, which we are apt to think their
inferior part.

In His Book all their members were written–He keeps all their bones
and the very hairs of their head are all numbered. Did He not assume
our perfect manhood? He took into union with His Deity a human soul,
but He also assumed a human body–and in that fact He gave us evidence
of His affinity to our perfect manhood, to our flesh and to our blood,
as well as to our mind and to our spirit. Moreover, our Redeemer has
perfectly ransomed both soul and body. It was not partial redemption
which our Kinsman effected for us.

We know that our Redeemer lives, not only with respect to our spirit
but with regard to our body so that, though the worm shall devour its
skin and flesh, yet shall it rise again because He has redeemed it from
the power of death and ransomed it from the prison of the grave. The
whole manhood of the Christian has already been sanctified. It is not
merely that with his spirit he serves his God, but he yields his
members to be instruments unto righteousness to the glory of his
heavenly father. "Know you not," says the Apostle, "that your bodies
are the temples of the Holy Spirit"? Surely that which has been a
temple of the Holy Spirit shall not be ultimately destroyed!

It may be taken down, as the tabernacle was in the wilderness, but
taken down to be put up again! Or, to use another form of the same
figure, the tabernacle may go but only that the temple may follow. "We
know that if this earthly house

of our tabernacle were dissolved we have a building of God, a house not
made with hands, eternal in the heavens." My Brothers and Sisters, it
would not be a complete victory over sin and Satan if the Savior left a
part of His people in the grave! It would not look as if He had
destroyed all the worlds of the devil if He only emancipated their
spirits. There shall not be a bone, nor a piece of a bone of any one of
Christ's people left in the grave at the last. Death shall not have a
solitary trophy to show–his prison shall be utterly rifled of all the
spoil which he has gathered from our humanity.

The Lord Jesus in all things shall have the pre-eminence and even as to
our materialism He shall vanquish death and the grave, leading our
captivity captive. It is a joy to think that as Christ has redeemed the
entire man and sanctified the entire man, He will be honored in the
salvation of the entire man, so our complete manhood shall have it in
its power to glorify Him! The hands with which we sinned shall be
lifted in eternal adoration. The eyes which have gazed on evil shall
behold the King in His beauty. Not merely shall the mind which now
loves the Lord be perpetually knit to Him and the spirit which
contemplates Him delight forever in Him, and be in communion with
Him–but this very body which has been a clog and hindrance to the
spirit and an arch rebel against the sovereignty of Christ–shall yield
Him homage with voice, and hands, and brain, and ears and eyes! We look
to the time of resurrection for the accomplishment of our adoption, to
wit, the redemption of the body!

But, this being our hope and though we believe and rejoice in it in a
measure, we have, nevertheless, to confess that sometimes questions
suggest themselves and the evil heart of unbelief cries, "Can it be
true? Is it possible?" At such times the question of our text is
exceedingly necessary, "Why should it be thought a thing incredible
with you that God should raise the dead?" This morning I shall first
ask you, dear Brethren, to look the difficulty in the face. And then,
secondly, we will endeavor to remove the difficulty–there is but one
way of doing so–and that a very simple one. And then, thirdly, we
shall have a word or two to say about our relation to this Truth of
God.

I. First, then, LET US LOOK THIS DIFFICULTY IN THE FACE. We shall not,
for a moment, flinch from the boldest and most plain assertion of our
belief in the resurrection, but will let its difficulties appear upon
the surface. Attempts have been made at different times by misguided
Christians to tone down or explain away the doctrine of the
resurrection and kindred truths in order to make them more acceptable
to skeptical or philosophical minds. But this has never succeeded.

No man has ever been convinced of a Truth of God by discovering that
those who profess to believe it are half ashamed of it and adopt a tone
of apology. How can a man be convinced by one who does not, himself,
believe? For that, in plain English, is what it comes to. When we
modify, qualify and attenuate our doctrinal statements, we make
concessions which will never be reciprocated and are only received as
admissions that we do not believe, ourselves, what we assert. By this
cutting and trimming policy we shear away the locks of our strength and
break our own arm. Nothing of that kind affects me, either now, or at
any time. We do, then really in very truth believe that the very body
which is put into the grave will rise again! And we mean this literally
and as we utter it.

We are not using the language of metaphor, or talking of a myth. We
believe that, in actual fact, the bodies of the dead will rise again
from the tomb! We admit and rejoice in the fact that there will be a
great change in the body of the righteous man–that its materialism
will have lost all the grossness and tendency to corruption which now
surrounds it–that it will be adapted for higher purposes. Whereas now
it is only a tenement fit for the soul or the lower intellectual
faculties, it will then be adapted for the spirit or the higher part of
our nature. We rejoice that though sown in weakness it will be raised
in power–though sown in dishonor it will be raised in glory! But we
nevertheless know that it will be the same body. The same body which is
put into the grave shall rise again!

There shall be an absolute identity between the body in which we die
and the body in which we rise again from the dust. But, let it be
remembered that identity is not the same thing as absolute sameness of
substance and continuance of atoms. We do not mention this
qualification at all by way of taking off the edge from our statement,
but simply because it is true. We are conscious, as a matter of fact,
that we are living in the same bodies which we possessed 20 years ago.
We are told and we have no reason to doubt it, that perhaps not one
single particle of the matter which constitutes our body now was in it
20 years ago! The changes our physical forms have undergone from
infancy to manhood are very great, yet we have the same bodies.

Admit the like identity in the resurrection and it is all we ask. The
body in which we die will be the same body in which we were
born–everybody admits that, though it is certainly not the same as in
all its particles–no, every particle

may have been exchanged and yet it will remain the same. So the body in
which we rise will be the same body in which we die–it will be greatly
changed, but those changes will not be such as to affect its identity.
Now, instead of mentioning this statement in order to make the doctrine
appear more easy to believe, I assure you that if I saw it taught in
Scripture that every single fragment of bone, flesh, muscle and sinew
which we put into the ground would rise again, I should believe it with
the same ease as I now accept the doctrine of the identity of the body
in the manner just stated.

We are not at all wishful to make our beliefs appear philosophical or
probable–far from it! We do not ask that men should say, "That can be
supported by science." Let the scientific men keep to their own sphere
and we will keep to ours. The doctrine we teach neither assails human
science, nor fears it, nor flatters it, nor asks its aid. We go on
quite another ground when we use the words of the passage, and say,
"Why should it be thought a thing incredible that God should raise the
dead?" We look for a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and of
the unjust. The literal rising again of the human body is our firm
belief.

Now this hope is naturally surrounded with many difficulties, because,
first of all, in the great mass of the dead decay has taken place. The
large majority of dead bodies have rotted and been utterly dissolved
and the larger proportion of all other bodies will probably follow
them. When we see bodies that have been petrified, or mummies which
have been embalmed, we think that if all bodies were preserved in that
way it were easier to believe in their restoration to life. But when we
break open some ancient sarcophagus and find nothing there but a little
impalpable brown powder–when we open a grave in the churchyard and
find only a few crumbled pieces of bone–and when we think of ancient
battlefields where thousands have fallen, where, notwithstanding,
through the lapse of years there remains not a trace of man, since the
bones have so completely melted back into earth, and in some cases have
been sucked up by the roots of plants and have passed into other
organizations, it certainly does seem a thing incredible that the dead
should be raised!

Moreover, corpses have been destroyed by quicklime, burned, devoured of
beasts, and even eaten by men–how shall these arise? Think how widely
diffused are the atoms which once built up living forms. Who knows
where the atoms may now be which once composed Cyrus, Hannibal, Scipio,
or Caesar? Particles once wedded through a man's life may now be
scattered wide as the poles asunder–one atom may be blowing across the
Sahara and another may be floating in the Pacific! Who knows amidst the
revolutions of the elements of this globe where the essential
constituents of any one body may be at this time? Where is the body of
Paul? Where is the body of Festus, who sent Paul to Rome, or of the
emperor who condemned him to die? Who can even guess an answer?

What wonder, then, if it seems an incredible thing that all men should
rise again! The difficulty increases when we come to reflect that the
doctrine of the resurrection teaches that all men will rise again–not
a certain portion of the race, not a few thousand persons–but all men!
It might be easier to believe in an Elijah, who should raise a dead man
occasionally, or in a Christ who should call back to life a young man
at the gates of Nain, or raise a Lazarus, or say, "Tabtha cumi," to a
little deceased girl. But it is difficult for the reason the doctrine
teaches that all shall rise–the myriads before the Flood, the
multitudes of Nineveh and Babylon, the hosts of Persia and of
Media–the millions that followed at the feet of Xerxes, the hosts
which marched with Alexander–and all the innumerable millions that
fell beneath the Roman sword.

Think of the myriads who have passed away in countries like China,
swarming with men, and conceive of these throughout 6,000 years
fattening the soil. Remember those who have perished by shipwreck,
plague, earthquake and, worst of all, by bloodshed and war. And
remember that all these will rise without exception–not one born of
woman shall sleep on forever–but all the bodies that ever breathed and
walked this earth shall live again. "O monstrous miracle," says one,
"it wears the aspect of a thing incredible!" Well, we shall not dispute
the statement, but give even yet more reason for it.

The wonder increases when we remember in what strange places many of
these bodies now may be. For the bodies of some have been left in deep
mines where they will never be reached again. They have been carried by
the wash and swell of tides into deep caverns of the ancient main.
There they lie, far away on the pathless desert where only the
vulture's eyes can see them–or buried beneath mountains of fallen
rock. In fact, where are man's remains not? Who shall point out a spot
of earth where the crumbling dust of Adam's sons is not? Blows there a
single summer wind down our streets without whirling along particles of
what once was man? Is there a single wave that breaks upon any shore
which holds not in solution some relic of what was once human? They lie
beneath each tree. They enrich the fields. They pollute the

brooks. They hide beneath the meadow grass. Surely from anywhere, from
everywhere, the scattered bodies shall return, like Israel from
captivity. As certainly as God is God, our dead men shall live and
stand upon their feet, an exceedingly great army.

And, moreover, to make the wonder extraordinary beyond conception, they
will rise at once, or perhaps in two great divisions. There is a
passage (Rev. 20:5, 6,) which apparently teaches us that between the
resurrection of the righteous and the resurrection of the wicked there
will be an interval of a thousand years. Many think that the passage
intends a spiritual resurrection but I am unable to think so. Assuredly
the words must have a literal meaning. Hear them and judge for
yourselves. "But the rest of the dead lived not again until the
thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. Blessed
and holy is he that has part in the first resurrection: on such the
second death has no power but they shall be priests of God and of
Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years."

Yet, granted that there may be this great interval, yet what a mass
will be seen when the righteous rise, a "multitude that no man can
number"–an inconceivable company known only to God's enumeration shall
suddenly start up from "beds of dust and silent clay." The break of a
thousand years shall be as nothing in the sight of God and shall soon
be over, and then the unjust shall also rise. What teeming multitudes!
Where shall they stand? What plains of earth shall hold them? Shall
they not cover all the solid earth even to the mountaintops? Shall they
not need to use the sea itself as a level floor for God's great assize?
In a moment shall they stand before God when the trumpet of the
archangel shall ring out clear and shrill the summons for the last
assize!

No years shall be needed in order that in God's great workshop bone
shall be fitted to its bone and the wondrous mechanism be refitted–a
moment shall suffice to rebuild the ruins of centuries! Curiously
worked as our bodies were at first in the lowest parts of the earth,
their restoration from the dead shall be effected in the twinkling of
an eye! Man needs time, but God is the Creator of time and needs it
not. Ages of ages are no more to Him than moments–in an instant His
greatest marvels are accomplished. Matchless marvel! We marvel not that
to many it seems a thing incredible that God should raise the dead. But
then, do not think that this resurrection will not be a mere
restoration of what was there, but the resurrection in the case of the
saints will involve a remarkable advance upon anything we now observe.

We put into the ground a bulb and it rises as a golden lily. We drop
into the mold a seed and it comes forth an exquisite flower,
resplendent with brilliant colors–these are the same which we put into
the earth, the same identically, but oh, how different! Even thus, the
bodies which are sown in burial, are so many seeds, and they shall
spring up by Divine power into outgrowths surpassing all imagination in
beauty! This increases the wonder, for the Lord Jesus not only snatches
the prey from between the teeth of the Destroyer but that which had
become worm's meat, ashes, dust, He raises in His own sacred image!

It is as though a tattered and moth-eaten garment were torn to shreds,
and then by a Divine Word restored to its perfection and in addition
made whiter than any fuller on earth could make it, and adorned with
costly fringes and embroideries unknown to it before–and all this in a
moment of time! Let it stand as a world of wonders, marvelous beyond
all things! We will not, for a moment, attempt to explain it away or
pare down the angles of the Truth of God. One of the difficulties of
believing it is this–that there are positively no full analogies in
Nature by which to support it. There are phenomena around us somewhat
like it so that we can compare, but I believe that there is no analogy
in Nature upon which it would be at all fair to found an argument.

For instance, some have said that sleep is the analogy of death and
that our awaking is a sort of resurrection. The figure is admirable,
but the analogy is very far from perfect since in sleep there is still
life. A continuance of life is manifest to the man himself in his
dreams and to all onlookers who choose to watch the sleeper, to hear
him breathe, or to watch his heart beat. But in death the body has no
pulse or other signs of life left in it–it does not even remain entire
as the body of the sleeper does. Imagine that the sleeper should be
torn limb from limb, pounded into mortar and reduced to powder–and
that powder mixed up with clay and mold. And then see him awaken at
your call and you would have something worth calling an analogy–but a
mere sleep from which a man is startled–while it is an excellent
comparison, is far enough from being the counterpart or prophecy of
resurrection.

More frequently we hear mentioned the development of insects as a
striking analogy. The larva is man in his present condition. The
chrysalis is a type of man in his death and the image or perfect insect
is the representation of man in his resurrection. An admirable simile,
certainly, but no more, for there is life in the chrysalis. There is
organization, there is,

in fact, the entire fly. No observer can mistake the chrysalis for a
dead thing. Take it up and you shall find everything in it that will
come out of it–the perfect creature is evidently dormant there. If you
could crush the chrysalis, dry up all its life juices, bruise it into
dust, pass it through chemical processes, utterly dissolve it–and then
afterwards call it back into a butterfly–you would have seen an
analogy of the resurrection. But this is unknown to Nature as yet.

I find no fault with the picture. It is most instructive and
interesting. But to argue from it would be childish to the last degree.
Nor is the analogy of the seed much more conclusive. The seed, when put
into the ground dies, and yet rises again in due season, hence the
Apostle uses it as the apt type and emblem of death. He tells us that
the seed is not quickened except it dies. What is death? Death is the
resolution of an organization into its original particles, and so the
seed begins to separate into its elements, to fall back from the
organization of life into the inorganic state. But still a life germ
always remains and the crumbling organization becomes its food from
which it builds itself up again.

Is it so with dead bodies of which not even a trace remains? Who shall
discover a life germ in the putrid corpse? I shall not say there may
not be some essential nucleus which better instructed beings might
perceive, but I would demand where in the corrupted body it can be
supposed to dwell. Is it in the brain? The brain is among the first
things to disappear. The skull is empty and void. Is it in the heart?
That also has a very brief duration, far briefer than the bones.
Nowhere could a microscope discover any vital principle in bodies
disinterred from the sod. Turn up the soil where the seed is buried, at
anytime you will, and you will find it where you placed it, if indeed
it will ever rise from the ground.

But such is not the case with the man who has been buried a few hundred
years–of him the last relic has probably passed beyond all
recognition. The generations to come are not more undiscoverable than
those which have gone. Think of those who were buried before the Flood,
or drowned in that general deluge. Where, I ask, have we the smallest
remnant of them? Grind your corn of wheat to fine flour and throw it to
the winds and behold corn fields rising from it, and then you will have
a perfect analogy. But as yet I do not think that Nature contains a
parallel case.

The resurrection stands alone! And concerning it the Lord might well
say, "Behold, I do a new thing in the earth." With the exception of the
resurrection of our Lord and those granted to a few persons by miracle,
we have nothing in history that can be brought to bear upon the point.
Here, then, is the difficulty, and a notable one it is. Can these dry
bones live? Is it a credible thing that the dead should be raised?

II. How are we to meet the demands of the case? We said that in the
second place we would REMOVE THE DIFFICULTY. We made no empty
boast–the matter is simple. Read the text again with due emphasis and
it is done. "Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you that
GOD should raise the dead?" It might seem incredible that the dead
should be raised, but why should it seem incredible that GOD, the
Almighty, the Infinite, should raise the dead? Grant a God and no
difficulties remain. Grant that God is and that He is Omnipotent–grant
that He has said the dead shall be raised and belief is no longer hard
but inevitable!

Impossibility and incredulity–both vanish in the Presence of God! I
believe this is the only way in which the difficulties of faith should
be met. It is of no use to run to reason for weapons against
unbelief–the Word of God is the true defense of faith! It is foolish
to build with wood and hay when solid stones may be had. If my heavenly
Father makes a promise or reveals a Truth, am I not to believe Him till
I have asked the philosophers about it? Is God's Word only true when
finite reason approves of it? After all, is man's judgment the
ultimatum and is God's Word only to be taken when we can see for
ourselves and therefore have no need of Revelation at all?

Far from us be this spirit! Let God be true and every man a liar! We
are not staggered when the wise men mock at us, but we fall back upon,
"thus says the Lord." One Word from God outweighs for us a library of
human lore. To the Christian, God's ipse dixit stands in the stead of
all reason. Our logic is, "God has said it," and this is our rhetoric,
too. If God declares that the dead shall be raised, it is not a thing
incredible to us. Difficulty is not in the dictionary of the Godhead.
Is anything too hard for the Lord? Heap up the difficulties, if you
like. Make the doctrine more and more hard for reason to compass–so
long as it contains no self-evident contradiction and inconsistency–we
rejoice in the opportunity to believe great things concerning a Great
God!

When Paul uttered our text he was speaking to a Jew. He was addressing
Agrippa, one to whom he could say, "King Agrippa, do you believe the
Prophets? I know that you believe!" It was, therefore, good reasoning
to use with Agrippa, to say, "Why should it be thought a thing
incredible with you that God should raise the dead?" For first, as a
Jew, Agrippa had the testimony of Job–"For I know that my Redeemer
lives, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon

the earth. And though after my skin, worms destroy this body, yet in my
flesh shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall
behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me."

He had, also, the testimony of David, who, in the 16th Psalm, says, "My
flesh also shall rest in hope." He had the testimony of Isaiah in the
26th chapter and the 19th verse, "Your dead men shall live, together
with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, you that dwell in
dust: for your dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out
the dead." He had the testimony of Daniel in his 12th chapter, 2nd and
3rd verses, where the Prophet says, "And many of them that sleep in the
dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to
shame and everlasting contempt. And they that are wise shall shine as
the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to
righteousness as the stars forever and ever."

And then again, in Hosea 13:14 Agrippa had another testimony where the
Lord declares "I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will
redeem them from death: O death, I will be your plagues; O grave, I
will be your destruction: repentance shall be hid from My eyes." Thus
God had plainly promised resurrection in the Old Testament Scriptures
and that fact should be quite enough for Agrippa. If the Lord has said
it, it is no longer doubtful. To us as Christians there has been
granted yet fuller evidence. Remember how our Lord has spoken
concerning resurrection– with no bated breath has He declared His
intention to raise the dead. Remarkable is that passage in John 5:28,
"Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming in the which all that are
in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; they that
have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done
evil, unto the resurrection of damnation."

And so in chapter 6:40, "And this is the will of Him that sent Me, that
everyone which sees the Son, and believes on Him, may have everlasting
life: and I will raise him up at the last day." The Holy Spirit has
spoken the same Truth of God by the Apostles. In that precious and most
blessed 8th chapter of Romans, we have a testimony in the 11th verse,
"But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in
you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your
mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwells in you." I read you just now
the passage from First Thessalonians which is very full, indeed, where
we are bid not to sorrow as those that are without hope.

And you have in Philippians the 3rd chapter and 21st verse, another
proof, "Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like
unto His glorious body, according to the working whereby He is able
even to subdue all things unto Himself." I scarcely need remind you of
that grand chapter of massive argument, Corinthians Fifteen. Beyond all
doubt the testimony of the Holy Spirit is that the dead shall rise, and
granted that there is an Almighty God, we find no difficulty in
accepting the doctrine and entertaining the blessed hope. At the same
time it may be well to look around us and note what helps the Lord has
appointed for our faith.

I am quite certain, dear Friends, that there are many wonders in the
world which we should not have believed by mere report if we had not
come across them by experience and observation. The electric telegraph,
though it is but an invention of man, would have been as hard to
believe a thousand years ago as the resurrection of the dead is now.
Who in the days of packhorses would have believed in flashing a message
from England to America? When our missionaries in tropical countries
have told the natives of the formation of ice and that persons could
walk across frozen water, and of ships that have been surrounded by
mountains of ice in the open sea, the water becoming solid and hard as
a rock all around them–the natives have refused to believe such absurd
reports!

Everything is amazing till we are used to it, and resurrection owes the
incredible portion of its marvel to the fact of our never having come
across it in our observation–that is all. After the resurrection we
shall regard it as a Divine display of power as familiar to us as
Creation and Providence are now. I have no doubt we shall adore and
bless God and wonder at Resurrection forever, but it will be in the
same sense in which every devout mind wonders at Creation now. We shall
grow accustomed to this new work of God when we have entered upon our
longer life. We were only born but yesterday and have seen little as
yet. God's works require far more than our few earthy years of
observation–and when we have entered into eternity and are out of our
minority and have come of age–that which astounds us now will have
become a familiar theme for praise.

Will Resurrection be a greater wonder than Creation? You believe that
God spoke the world out of nothing. He said, "Let it be," and the world
was. To create out of nothing is quite as marvelous as to call together
scattered particles and refashion them into what they were before!
Either work requires Omnipotence, but if there is any choice between
them, Resurrection is the easier work of the two. If it did not happen
so often, the birth of every child into the world

would astound us. We should consider a birth to be, as indeed it is, a
most transcendent manifestation of Divine power. It is only because we
know it and see it so commonly that we do not behold the wonder-working
hand of God in human births and in our continued existence. The thing,
I say, only staggers us because we have not become familiar with it as
yet–there are other deeds of God which are quite as marvelous.

Remember, too, that there is one thing which, though you have not seen,
you have received on credible evidence, which is a part of historic
truth, namely, that Jesus Christ rose again from the dead. He is to you
the cause of your resurrection, the type of it, the foretaste of it,
the guarantee of it! As surely as He rose you shall rise. He proved the
Resurrection possible by rising, no, He proved it certain because He is
the representative Man. And, in rising He rose for all who are
represented by Him. "As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be
made alive." The rising of our Lord from the tomb should forever sweep
away every doubt as to the rising of His people. "For if the dead rise
not, then is Christ not raised," but because He lives, we shall live
also.

Remember also, my Brothers and Sisters, that you who are Christians
have already experienced within yourselves as great a work as the
Resurrection–for you have risen from the dead as to your innermost
Nature. You were dead in trespasses and sins and you have been
quickened into newness of life! Of course the unconverted here will see
nothing in this. The unregenerate man will even ask me what this means,
and to him it can be no argument, for it is a matter of experience
which one man cannot explain to his fellow. To know it you must
yourselves be born-again. But, Believers, you have already passed
through a resurrection from the grave of sin and from the rottenness
and corruption of evil passions and impure desires–and this
resurrection God has worked in you by a power equal to that which He
worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and set Him at His
own right hand in the heavenly places.

To you the quickening of your spiritual Nature is an assured proof that
the Lord will also quicken your mortal bodies. The whole matter is
this–that our persuasion of the certainty of the general resurrection
rests upon faith in God and His Word. It is both idle and needless to
look elsewhere. If men will not believe the declaration of God, they
must be left to give an account to Him of their unbelief. My Hearer, if
you are one of God's elect, you will believe your God, for God gives
faith to all His chosen. If you reject the Divine testimony, you give
evidence that you are in the gall of bitterness, and you will perish in
it unless Grace prevents it. The Gospel and the doctrine of the
Resurrection were opened up to men in all their glory to put a division
between the precious and the vile. "He that is of God," says the
Apostle, "hears God's Words."

True faith is the visible mark of secret election. He that believes in
Christ gives evidence of God's Grace towards him, but he that believes
not gives sure proof that he has not received the Grace of God. "But
you believe not," said Christ, "because you are not of My sheep, as I
said unto you. My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow
Me." Therefore this Truth of God and other Christian Truths are to be
held up, maintained and delivered fully to the whole of mankind to put
a division between them–to separate the Israelites from the
Egyptians–the seed of the woman from the seed of the serpent. Those
whom God has chosen are known by their believing in what God has
said–while those who remain unbelieving perish in their sin, condemned
by the Truth of God which they willfully reject.

III. Thus much upon these points. Now let us consider, lastly, OUR
RELATION TO THIS TRUTH. Our first

relation to this Truth is this–Children of God, comfort one another
with these words. You have lost those dear to you–amend the
statement–they have passed into a better land and the body which
remains behind is not lost, but put out to blessed interest. Sorrow you
must, but sorrow not as those that are without hope! I do not know why
we always sing dirges at the funerals of the saints and drape ourselves
in black. I would desire, if I might have my way, to be drawn to my
grave by white horses or to be carried on the shoulders of men who
would express joy as well as sorrow in their habiliments, for why
should we sorrow over those who have gone to Glory and inherited
immortality?

I like the old Puritan plan of carrying the coffin on the shoulders of
the saints and singing a Psalm as they walked to the grave. Why not?
What is there, after all, to weep about concerning the glorified? Sound
the gladsome trumpet! Let the shrill clarion peal out the joyous note
of victory! The Conqueror has won the battle! The King has climbed to
His throne. "Rejoice," say our Brethren from above, "rejoice with us,
for we have entered into our rest." "Blessed are the dead which die in
the Lord from henceforth: yes, says the Spirit, that they may rest from
their labors and their works do follow them." If we must keep up the
signs of woe, for this is natural, yet let not your hearts be troubled,
for that were unspiritual. Bless God evermore that over the pious dead
we sing His living promises.

Let us, in the next place, cheer our hearts in prospect of our own
departure. We shall soon pass away. My Brothers and Sisters, we, too,
must die. There is no discharge in this war. There is an arrow and
there is an archer–the arrow is meant for my heart–and the archer
will take deadly aim. There is a place where you shall sleep, perhaps
in a lone grave in a foreign land. Or, perhaps, in a niche where your
bones shall lie side by side with those of your ancestors–but to the
dust you must return. Well, let us not repine! It is but for a little
while–it is but a rest on the way to immortality. Death is a passing
incident between this life and the next–let us meet it not only with
equanimity but with expectation, since it is not death now but
resurrection to which we aspire!

Then again, as we are expecting a blessed resurrection, let us respect
our bodies. Let not our members become instruments of evil. Let them
not be defiled with sin. The Christian man must neither, by gluttony
nor drunkenness, nor by acts of uncleanness in any way whatever defile
his body, for our bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit. "If any
man defiles that temple of God, him will God destroy." Be pure! In your
Baptism your bodies were washed with pure water to teach you that
henceforth you must be clean from all defilement. Put away from you
every evil thing. Bodies that are to dwell forever in Heaven should not
be subjected to pollution here below.

Lastly, and this is a very solemn thought, the ungodly are to rise
again but it will be to a resurrection of woe. Their bodies sinned and
their bodies will be punished. "Fear Him," says Christ, "who is able to
destroy both soul and body in Hell." He will cast both of them into a
suffering which shall cause perpetually enduring destruction to
them–this is terrible, indeed. To slumber in the grave would be
infinitely preferable to such a resurrection–"the resurrection of
damnation," so the Scripture calls it. A rising "to shame and
everlasting contempt," so Daniel styles it. That is a dreadful
resurrection, indeed–you might be glad to escape from it.

Surely it were dreadful enough for your soul to suffer the eternal
wrath of God without the body having to be its companion, but so it
must be. If body and soul sin, body and soul must suffer, and that
forever. Jeremy Taylor tells us of a certain Acilius Aviola who was
seized with an apoplexy and his friends, conceiving him to be dead,
carried him to his funeral pile, but, when the heat had warmed his
body, he awoke to find himself hopelessly encircled with funeral
flames. In vain he called for deliverance! He could not be rescued but
passed from lethargy into intolerable torment.

Such will be the dreadful awakening of every sinful body when it shall
be aroused from its slumber in the grave. The body will start up to be
judged, condemned, and driven from God's Presence into everlasting
punishment! May God grant that it may never be your case or mine, but
may we believe in Christ Jesus now and so obtain a resurrection to life
eternal. Amen.
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A Simple Remedy