|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 7
[Sidenote: The Historical Statement.]
Passing over the historical assertions which follow the doctrine of the
virgin birth, "suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and
buried," because there is nothing in these statements difficult or
incredible, we reach the doctrine of His resurrection, "the third day
He rose from the dead," a doctrine next to that of the virgin birth in
natural difficulty of acceptance.
[Sidenote: Christ's Resurrection.]
[Sidenote: Surprise of Disciples.]
[Sidenote: The Fact Accounts for History.]
Faith in this seems to me to depend on how far we have accepted Christ's
Deity and His incarnation. If by the Holy Ghost we have been able "to
say that Jesus is the Lord;" if by that blessed energy we perceive His
Divine mastership; if by the same energy we feel that He has transformed
us into the image of His dear Son; raising us "from the death of sin
into the life of righteousness" it is not difficult to believe that
Jesus "the power of the Resurrection" rose from the dead. "The fact of
the Resurrection and belief in the fact is not explicable by any
antecedent conditions apart from its truth."[5] The disciples did not
expect what they saw. His death was for them so far as we can see,
without hope. They were not able yet to interpret His prophecy that He
would build again His temple, nor understand the spirituality of His
kingdom. These facts seem to me utterly to demolish the theory of a
vision called up by eager, yea, agonizing, expectation. The idea of the
Resurrection justifies His prophecies as to Himself and the fact
accounts, better than any theory which denies the fact, for the faith
and founding of the early Church as well as for the course of subsequent
history and of the believer's experience.
[Footnote 5: Westcott. The Revelation of the Risen Lord.]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Slow Belief in Resurrection.]
It is much to see that belief became belief only with great difficulty.
The idea of the Resurrection was strange and alarming to the disciples.
"They were terrified and affrighted and supposed they beheld a spirit."
Slowly by tests of sense as well as by persuasions of teaching did the
disciples come to believe that the Christ of the Resurrection was the
same Christ who suffered on the cross.
[Sidenote: Not an Invention.]
[Sidenote: An Eye-witness Story.]
It seems impossible that the Resurrection could have been an invention
or that the account of it could be a work of the imagination. The last
is almost as great a miracle as the Resurrection itself. In detail, in
naturalness, even in the presence of difficulties and hindrances to easy
belief of the story, the narrative seems that of an eye-witness. No
reasoning can bring faith, however, to one who denies the miraculous. As
a fact, the Resurrection is incapable of naturalistic explanation. To
those who deny the miraculous I can only again point out how Huxley cuts
out the _a priori_ argument from Hume as worthless. As quoted in his
biography, Huxley says: "We are not justified in the _a priori_
assertion that the order of nature, as experience has revealed it to us,
can not change. The assumption is illegitimate because it involves the
whole point in dispute."
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Ascent into Heaven.]
[Sidenote: The Ascension.]
[Sidenote: Nature not Wholly Love.]
[Sidenote: Evil and Good.]
Necessarily miraculous also is the doctrine, "He ascended into heaven."
In this He passed from the visible into the invisible; from the
conditions of human life to those of the life of a spirit; from the work
of redemption to that of intercession. If His resurrection be accepted,
His ascension presents no difficulties to faith. This, with His
incarnation, and the facts of His earthly life are the manifestation of
the tender side of God to the senses even as His wisdom and power are
shown to the senses by the facts and laws of nature. As to the doctrine,
"God is love," nature's word can never be conclusive. In the natural
kingdom joy and sorrow, ease and pain, love and hate, kindness and
cruelty, trust and terror exist side by side, as do life and death. No
man concludes, from nature alone, that God is ruled by love. Because man
can not conclude this, Ormuzd and Ahriman are found substantially in all
religions, as in that of the Parsees, except in the Christian. Here the
warfare is not to be eternal. The victory of good is to come. Divine
help is promised, that it may be secured in every soul. The conquest of
evil by good is within that Christian omnipotence which Paul knew. "I
can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me." It requires a
Christ to show that the path to rest is through toil; that the way to
ease is through suffering; that the highway to life passes through
death. Only thus can "mortality be swallowed up of life."
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|