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THE EASTER HOPE 
 
 OR 
 
 THE LIFE IMMORTAL 
 
THE EASTER HOPE 
 
 OR 
 
 THE LIFE IMMORTAL 
 
 By*&* 
 Rev. ANDREW W* ARCHIBALD, D. D. 
 
 Author of 
 
 " The Bible Verified," " The Trend of the Centuries," 
 
 •« Biblical Nature Studies," ** The Modern Man Facing the Old Problems ' 
 
 * For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see, 
 
 Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that 
 
 would be." —Tennyson 
 
 NEW EDITION 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 THE JUDSON PRESS 
 
 BOSTON CHICAGO ST. LOUIS NEW YORK 
 
 LOS ANGELES KANSAS CITY SEATTLE 
 
^ 
 
 
 Copyright, 1918, by 
 GILBERT N. BRINK, Secretary 
 
 Published December, 1918 
 
 JAN -8 1319 
 
 ©OU510291 
 
 *"Wi7 I 
 
TO 
 
 IN COMMEMORATION OF 
 
 MORE THAN FORTY YEARS OF WEDDED LIFE 
 
 1876 MAY EIGHTEENTH 1918 
 
 IN MEMORY 
 
 ALSO 
 
 OF A BELOVED SON 
 
 FEBRUARY 25,. 1880 JUNE 20, I908 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Tennyson's " In Memoriam," which has greatly 
 quickened faith in the life immortal, grew out of 
 the seemingly untimely death of the gifted young 
 Hallam. The present volume had a similar origin, 
 in an excruciatingly sorrowful experience of the 
 author, when there was a mysterious and tragical 
 taking away of a son, who had recently grad- 
 uated from Dartmouth College, who had supple- 
 mented this training with the culture that comes 
 from a trip of six months in the Orient and 
 through Europe, and who had just entered upon 
 a business career. 
 
 The book at first may be said to have had 
 in a sense a private printing, for it came, not 
 from a regular publishing house, but from an 
 individual whose output in the main consists of 
 church-membership cards, baptismal and marriage 
 certificates, and the like. Though thus meant as a 
 kind of personal memorial, it was most favorably 
 noticed by the press and by persons of eminence, 
 and it met with a considerable sale, being in a 
 second edition when a disastrous fire wiped out 
 everything, leaving only a few damaged copies. 
 The thought has occurred that what was intended 
 for a rather restricted use might serve a wider 
 
Preface 
 
 public by eliminating the biographical sketch, and 
 the portrait, and the appreciation by President 
 Tucker of Dartmouth, while also other changes 
 and additions, some of them suggested by the tre- 
 mendous experiences of men in the world war, 
 have seemed appropriate. 
 
 It may be fitting, however, to recall briefly the 
 tragedy which gave rise to the volume. The son 
 in 1908, with three other young men, had gone 
 on a camping vacation in the high Sierras of Cali- 
 fornia, in the region of the King's River Canon, 
 where there are Alpine altitudes. On June twen- 
 tieth he started out alone for an all-day climb, and 
 when he failed to return as he had planned, 
 his three companions began a search, and the 
 alarm being given they were soon joined by a 
 dozen others, who hunted by day, and slept on the 
 ground wherever overtaken by the night. More 
 than two weeks of systematic searching proved in 
 vain, absolutely no trace of the lost one hav- 
 ing been gotten. Whether he stumbled into some 
 rushing torrent or into* some mountain lake, or 
 whether he fell from some dizzy height, some 
 towering granite cliff, seemed likely never to be 
 revealed. His disappearance seemed as inexplica- 
 ble as that of Moses, when he went " unto mount 
 Nebo, to the top of Pisgah," where his life was 
 ended, " but no man knoweth of his sepulcher 
 unto this day. 3 ' 
 
 With tearful solemnity were recalled the poet's 
 lines : 
 
Preface 
 
 . 
 
 By Nebo's lonely mountain, 
 
 On this side Jordan's wave, 
 In a vale in the land of Moab, 
 
 There lies a lonely grave; 
 But no man dug that sepulcher, 
 
 And no man saw it e'er, 
 For the angels of God upturned the sod, 
 
 And laid the dead man there. 
 
 And had he not high honor? 
 
 The hillside for his pall; 
 To lie in state while angels wait, 
 
 With stars for tapers tall; 
 And the dark rock pine, like tossing plumes, 
 
 Over his bier to wave ; 
 And God's own hand, in that lonely land, 
 
 To lay him in the grave, 
 
 In that deep grave, without a name, 
 
 Whence his uncoffined clay 
 Shall break again — Oh wondrous thought ! 
 
 Before the judgment day; 
 And stand with glory wrapped around, 
 
 On the hills he never trod, 
 And speak of the strife that won our life 
 
 With the incarnate Son of God. 
 
 More than two weary years had passed away, 
 when in July of 1910 a Sierra party of nearly two 
 hundred went on a vacation in the same vicinity, 
 to which the four young men in 1908 had pene- 
 trated. An encampment was made on the lower 
 end of Rae Lake. At the upper part of this body 
 of water rose Mt. Rixford, which one of the 
 company was setting out to climb, when, July 
 twentieth, he came upon the remains and pos- 
 
Preface 
 
 sessions of some person who evidently had per- 
 ished there. The identification was made positive 
 by a drinking-cup with the initials, K. A., and by 
 a watch similarly marked, given him on his six- 
 teenth birthday by his parents, who still recall the 
 kiss he gave each of them in expression of his 
 appreciation and his delight at the simple gift. 
 The conclusion reached by those who investigated 
 was, that the long-lost son probably had been 
 suddenly overwhelmed by an avalanche of snow, 
 which covered him and concealed his body from 
 the searchers of two years before, who had 
 traversed this very ground. The very meager 
 remains that were found, only a few of the smaller 
 bones, were conveyed back east, and were tenderly 
 interred in the family lot in the Fair Haven 
 Cemetery of New Haven, Conn., Joseph's injunc- 
 tion of long centuries before regarding himself 
 having been carried out, " Ye shall carry up my 
 bones from hence." 
 
 All this led the writer to inquire anew as to 
 the future, and it furnished the dark background 
 whereon to project the brightness of the Christian 
 hope, even as the black and ominous storm-cloud 
 only displays to better advantage the cheering and 
 radiant rainbow. He turns with considerable re- 
 lief from sociological problems and questions of 
 environment to what has sometimes been slight- 
 ingly termed " other-worldliness," which indeed 
 is becoming a timely subject from the scientific 
 side in view of the studies of to-day on psychical 
 
Preface 
 
 research. He feels again the appealing force of 
 the example set, according to Xenophon, by Cyrus 
 the Great. This model ruler of antiquity, on 
 nearing his end, talked to friends and relatives 
 about immortality in words which Cicero after- 
 ward quoted for their beauty and truth. " You 
 cannot surely believe," he said, " that when I 
 have ended this mortal life, I shall cease to exist. 
 Even in lifetime you have never seen my soul; 
 you have only inferred its existence. And there 
 are grounds for inferring the continuance of the 
 soul after death.' ' It is to this thought that the 
 attention of the reader is herein invited. 
 
 Like the crisis in which the writer was, like 
 the dark vale from which he emerged into the 
 light shed by an assured conviction of a glorious 
 immortality, is the agonizing situation in which 
 not a few individuals but countless thousands 
 find themselves because of the world war that has 
 now been raging for over four years. Never have 
 so many been constrained to give serious attention 
 to the beyond. This could not be otherwise with 
 soldiers and sailors and aviators by the hundred 
 thousand " going west," as they have expressed 
 it, since the tragic struggle involving nearly all 
 mankind began. An expert statistician connected 
 with a great trust company, from his study of 
 the list of casualties, reckons the dead alone, for 
 four years of the international conflict, at eight 
 and a half millions, to which, since this computa- 
 tion' was made, additions are rapidly being made. 
 
Preface 
 
 America in a year and a half nearly has be- 
 come deeply involved. With half a million in 
 our navy, with three millions in our army, half of 
 them already overseas September i, 1918, with 
 five millions to be under arms, and with four 
 millions of these to be in France, by the middle 
 of the coming year, we can see what multitudes 
 are being brought to give, as Lincoln in his 
 Gettysburg address said, " the last full measure 
 of devotion " to God and country. All these are 
 being forced by the exigencies of the present to 
 put their lives in jeopardy. They know not what 
 their destiny may be. All their kindred and 
 friends are distressed because of the dread possi- 
 bilities speaking of large numbers whose years are 
 bound to be cut short, although they are also filled 
 with pride at the exhibition of such bravery and 
 loyalty. 
 
 There are, of course, rich compensations in 
 the thought of serving humanity, of staying a 
 cruel and brutal despotism, of advancing the cause 
 of liberty and Christian civilization. Nevertheless 
 we cannot help being impressed with the seem- 
 ingly premature hurrying into eternity of a vast 
 host that cannot be numbered. Even that, how- 
 ever, may not be all disaster. It is difficult for us 
 to realize that Paul may have been right, and 
 that he may have been stating an actual fact, 
 when he said so positively, " To die is gain." 
 There are consolations in the promise of a future, 
 which may indeed be so much better than our 
 
Preface 
 
 terrestrial existence here as to remove the sting 
 of death and rob mortality of its apparent victory. 
 It is this aspect of the matter which these pages 
 consider. 
 
 This volume will have answered its purpose 
 if it offers to* the clergy suggestions for Easter 
 messages, if it conveys to> the laity cheer regarding 
 the mysterious hereafter, if it carries to all who 
 have been bereaved in the ordinary course of 
 nature the deep comfort which their stricken 
 hearts crave, and especially if it heartens those 
 who have been perturbed by the present world 
 crisis with its enormous demand upon human lives. 
 The " crossing of the bar," upon a proper reflec- 
 tion, can come to be regarded as life's greatest 
 and most beautiful " adventure," to use the figure 
 of one of the Lusitania's victims, who in spite of 
 friendly demurrers did not hesitate to go on what 
 (by warning notices of the German embassy in the 
 daily papers on the eve of sailing) had really 
 been advertised as a doomed ship. There can be 
 Tennyson's entire equanimity, when there is his 
 religious faith, which enabled him to say, 
 
 And may there be no moaning of the bar, 
 When I put out to sea. 
 
 I hope to see my Pilot face to face 
 When I have crossed the bar. 
 
 A. W. A. 
 
 Newton Center, Boston. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Chapter Page 
 
 I. The Resurrection of Christ i 
 
 II. The Resurrection in Nature 21 
 
 III. Immortality and the Resurrection. 41 
 
 IV. The Resurrection of the Body 57 
 
 V. The Bearing of Evolution on the 
 
 Resurrection Hope 73 
 
 VI. A Threefold Resurrection 85 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST 
 
 In the reign of Caesar Augustus there appeared 
 a remarkable character on the stage of action. 
 On reaching manhood his claims included the 
 restoring of sight to the blind, of hearing to 
 the deaf, of health to the sick, and even of life 
 to the dead. That he did these wonderful works, 
 or appeared to do them, seemed to be conceded 
 by all. At first the people only marveled, but 
 gradually they formed into two distinct parties. 
 The one party believed that the works were done 
 by divine power, the other insisted that it was 
 through Satanic agency, or through trickery of 
 some sort, as he was pronounced a " deceiver." 
 
 The person who was the cause of this divided 
 sentiment, was Jesus. Those who- rallied about 
 him were for the most part plain, honest people, 
 who thought for themselves. Among them were 
 many, who with a whole-hearted independence 
 had formerly rushed off into dissipation, but who 
 now were leading reformed lives. These con- 
 stituted what may be called the popular party. 
 Arrayed against Jesus were, with few exceptions, 
 the chief men of the nation, together with a hot- 
 headed rabble, ever ready to do the bidding of 
 their priests, and the Pharisees being here the 
 
 [3] 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 ruling element ( for they were the spiritual guides 
 of the uneducated masses), this may be desig- 
 nated as the Pharisaic party. 
 
 Feeling ran high. Events followed one an- 
 other in rapid succession, until on a Friday after- 
 noon Jesus was hanging on a cross between two 
 robbers. The Pharisaic party was jubilant, tri- 
 umphant. The popular party was broken and 
 scattered, nothing remaining of it except some 
 personal followers whose hopes of a kingdom 
 were all blasted, notwithstanding the fact that 
 their leader had foretold his crucifixion, and had 
 even declared that he would rise the third day. 
 His words they remembered, but they seem to 
 have thought that his language was in nature 
 parabolic and figurative, for he often spoke in 
 parables and figures. 
 
 How could he rise? For to make assurance 
 of his death doubly sure, his very heart had been 
 pierced by a soldier's lance. All that his faithful 
 friends were now concerned about was to give 
 him decent and kindly burial. With heavy hearts 
 they laid him away in a sepulcher hewn out of the 
 solid rock. With great exultation, under the cir- 
 cumstances, could the scribes and the Pharisees 
 refer sarcastically to the King of the Jews, and yet 
 they were not entirely at ease. Recollecting the 
 prophecy of a resurrection, they were afraid lest 
 his disciples should abduct the body, and then 
 claim that the prediction had been fulfilled. They, 
 therefore, had everything made secure, the seal 
 
 [4] 
 
The Resurrection of Christ 
 
 of the great Roman Empire being applied to the 
 closed tomb, and a military guard being appointed 
 to prevent by soldierly vigilance any fraud. No 
 more chance for deception! The deceiver was 
 hemmed in at last ! Exposure was certain. With 
 the tomb sealed, and with soldiers pacing con- 
 stantly to and fro, the world would be imposed 
 upon no longer. 
 
 Friday night, all of Saturday, and Saturday 
 night passed. Sunday morning there was great 
 excitement. Wild rumors were flying through 
 the air. People were running hither and thither, 
 hardly knowing where they went. Soldiers gath- 
 ered in little knots, and talked in low and hurried 
 tones. On the way from the city to the sepulcher 
 sped along a woman, followed by two men who 
 soon outstripped her in the race. What was the 
 news? Why, the body of Jesus was gone, the 
 grave was empty ! How could that be ? Around 
 the council hall, where were gathered the priests 
 and rulers, it was reported that the previous night 
 the guard all fell asleep, and awoke to< find the 
 body gone. Here and there was a group of dis- 
 ciples, despondent, because all that remained of 
 their Master had been borne away by hostile 
 hands, as they supposed, to be laid they knew not 
 where. And so the multitude was agitated by the 
 conflicting reports, until ere long there came an- 
 other message of a resurrection, " The Lord is 
 risen indeed." What was the truth? If Christ 
 actually rose, let the evidence be produced. Let 
 
 [5] 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 us have the facts, whether they go for or against 
 a resurrection. Call up the witnesses. 
 
 First, let the soldiers, who watched at the 
 rocky vault, take the stand. What is their testi- 
 mony? " His disciples came by night, and stole 
 him away while we slept." But it was to prevent 
 that very thing that they were placed on duty, 
 and that circumstance of itself throws some dis- 
 credit upon their story. Then the Roman pun- 
 ishment for a soldier who fell asleep at his post 
 was death; and yet they would have us believe 
 that not one but all of them dropped off into 
 a deep slumber. 
 
 They were asleep, were they? How, then, 
 did they know that the disciples had been there? 
 They must have dreamed it, and of course dreams 
 are very reliable testimony. Where did they 
 get that extra money which they were known to 
 have? There certainly was a strong appearance 
 of their having been bribed to- concoct the story 
 they told. They were particular, too, to explain 
 that it was " by night " when the whole thing 
 happened, and when they fell asleep. Had it not 
 been for that explanatory clause, "by night," 
 they might be supposed to have been slumbering 
 at noonday. How often persons volunteer infor- 
 mation which is incriminating, and which is a sure 
 sign of guilt ! 
 
 A few years ago a Connecticut murderess, 
 Lydia Sherman, escaped from jail, and in arrest- 
 ing her the officer without a word simply pointed 
 
 [6] 
 
The Resurrection of Christ 
 
 to an article in her possession with the initials, 
 L. S., whereupon she quickly spoke up, " That 
 does not say Lydia Sherman." He had not said 
 that it did; he merely called attention to the in- 
 itials, and her gratuitous explanation proved that 
 she was the very one wanted. So the soldiers 
 volunteered information, added a saving or ex- 
 planatory clause, which plainly showed that they 
 were falsifying : " His disciples came by night, . . 
 while we slept" Just as if they might have been 
 sleeping in broad daylight ! Let the soldiers leave 
 the stand, no court can receive such evidence as 
 they give. 
 
 Let Mary Magdalene be the next witness. 
 What is her story as gathered from the records? 
 She had been a devoted follower of Jesus, and 
 a complete revolution had been wrought in her 
 character. She was present at the cross. She 
 saw the place of burial Friday afternoon. She 
 Hastened home to prepare sweet spices, with 
 which, when Saturday or the Jewish Sabbath was 
 passed, she might return to embalm the body of 
 her Lord. At daybreak on Sunday she with other 
 women approached the sepulcher to perform the 
 last sad offices of affection for the dead, somewhat 
 as we carry flowers to decorate the brown earth, 
 before the grass has grown green over the mound 
 that covers some dear one, and before the heart 
 has forgotten its grief. 
 
 It was a question with the sorrowing women 
 how the great stone could be removed, but on 
 
 m 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 drawing near Mary saw it was already rolled 
 back. In great alarm she ran to tell Peter and 
 John that the Jews had probably removed the 
 body, she knew not where. She followed back 
 after the two disciples, who hastened to the spot, 
 and she remained weeping at the tomb after they 
 had gone away. As she wept because they had 
 taken away her Lord, a person whom she sup- 
 posed to be the gardener asked her the cause of 
 her sorrow, and she begged him, if he had re- 
 moved the body, to let her take the precious re- 
 mains. To this the apparent stranger replied 
 with the simple mention of her name, " Mary," 
 and the familiar address brought from her a 
 rapturous recognition. She hastened to tell the 
 disciples that she had seen the Lord, no longer 
 dead but risen, while they called her words 
 only " idle talk," and made no secret of their 
 disbelief. 
 
 Such is the testimony of Mary Magdalene, and 
 strong evidence it is. It lias no appearance of 
 being manufactured. She did not have certain 
 hopes, and then make her story fit in there- 
 with. On the contrary everything was against her 
 expectations. She expected to cover with spices 
 the remains of her Master, but she was disap- 
 pointed in this task of reverential love. Her first 
 thought, on seeing the stone rolled away, was that 
 the Jews had stolen the body, and that accordingly 
 was the first report which she carried back to the 
 disciples. Not till she had actually seen the Lord 
 
 [8] 
 
The Resurrection of Christ 
 
 himself, did she announce that he had risen. Thus 
 so far from trying to manufacture evidence, she 
 could hardly be made to believe the revelation of 
 her own eyes. Had she gone to the grave with a 
 strong desire to see Jesus alive, the desire might 
 have been father to the belief. In a highly ner- 
 vous condition she might have imagined to be a 
 fact what she fondly hoped would be one. But 
 instead of expecting to find Jesus risen, she ex- 
 pected to find him dead, and she was proposing to 
 anoint the dead. 
 
 Nor was she, on account of what is sometimes 
 termed feminine susceptibility, persuaded into her 
 new belief by the stronger, more determined mas- 
 culine nature; she, for instance, did not owe her 
 belief to the disciples, for she was convinced be- 
 fore them, and they were the ones who " dis- 
 believed " her, when she carried to them the 
 news of the resurrection. So that: there seems to 
 be no flaw in the evidence of Mary Magdalene. 
 Her story is plain, simple, straightforward. Let 
 'her pass from the stand. 
 
 The next to be called to tell " the truth, the 
 whole truth, and nothing but the truth," will be 
 Cleopas and a companion of his, who on a Sun- 
 day afternoon took that historic walk to Emmaus. 
 They had been informed of the rumor circulated 
 by the women, and of its partial confirmation by 
 Peter and John, who certainly had found the 
 grave empty, but who as yet had not seen the 
 Lord himself, and therefore the two doubted, until 
 
 [9] 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 at a friendly meal they had the proof of their own 
 eyes. 
 
 Their familiar narrative, whether true or not, 
 at any rate runs along in a most natural way. 
 There is at least the appearance of truth in all the 
 minute circumstances given : the setting out on 
 foot to a village, the stranger coming up to them, 
 their surprise at his ignorance and his reproof of 
 their unbelief, their invitation to him to stop 
 with them overnight as his movements indicated 
 that he was going on past where they were turning 
 in to abide ; the sitting down to a table for supper, 
 the asking of a blessing and the wonderful revela- 
 tion therein ; the hurrying back to Jerusalem, the 
 going to a meeting of disciples there, the excited 
 greeting exchanged — all these details show gen- 
 uineness. A fabrication would not have brought 
 in so many little side incidents, which are re- 
 lated without any apparent purpose, and Which 
 had nothing to do with the main issue. Cleopas 
 and his friend evidently recited real events, and 
 did not ingeniously weave together a tissue of 
 falsehoods in support of a pious fraud. 
 
 Then at that first Easter evening meeting of dis- 
 ciples, Tiow reluctant they were to believe the story 
 of the two who came hurrying back from Em- 
 maus ! How slow likewise they were to receive 
 the testimony of Peter, who declared to them that 
 there had been an appearance to him also on 
 that same Sunday. They were all talking ex- 
 citedly together, and when in the midst of the ani- 
 
 [10] 
 
The Resurrection of Christ 
 
 mated discussion Jesus suddenly appeared to 
 themselves, they thought it was a spirit, a ghost, 
 until he ate in their presence like any other person 
 with flesh and bones, with a veritable existence, 
 and they were compelled to give credence to such 
 a palpable manifestation. 
 
 But there was one persistent doubter; let him 
 be called up; let Thomas take the stand. He 
 had lost all hope, he had given up everything. 
 He refused to meet with the other disciples on 
 that first Sunday night. A whole week he went 
 about, a rank skeptic. He was acquainted with the 
 reports of the resurrection, but he rejected them 
 utterly. He would not accept the testimony of 
 those with whom he had been intimately asso- 
 ciated, and that, too, though they went to him 
 personally, and declared most solemnly that they 
 had with their own eyes seen the Lord. He would 
 not be satisfied with any evidence short of put- 
 ting his own fingers in the prints of the nails 
 and in the pierced side. 
 
 On the return of the next Sunday evening, he 
 was offered by Jesus, who appeared again, the 
 very proof he had demanded, whereupon there 
 came that burst of conviction, " My Lord and 
 my God ! " Such is the evidence of a man natu- 
 rally skeptical, of one who was sure to see all the 
 difficulties of the case, who refused in so im- 
 portant a matter to rely upon the judgment of 
 his most trusted friends, who declared that he 
 must see and handle for himself. Such testimony 
 
 en] 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 in the estimation of the world is worth some- 
 thing. It is not the fancy of a good but ex- 
 citable nature. It is not the opinion of a credulous 
 mind, but it is the verdict of a sound, cautious 
 judge. 
 
 Shall any more witnesses be sworn on this 
 case? We might, if necessary, bring forward 
 seven men, who on the shore after a night's fish- 
 ing on the lake, breakfasted and talked with 
 Christ. We could present the evidence of James, 
 who was an own brother of the Lord, who still re- 
 mained an unbeliever at the time of the cruci- 
 fixion, but who had such an indisputable manifes- 
 tation made to him, that he at last was convinced. 
 He was long the head of the Jerusalem church, 
 while he also wrote part of the New Testament in 
 the epistle bearing his name. We could cite more 
 than five hundred, to whom there was a simul- 
 taneous appearance on an appointed mountain in 
 Galilee, and of whom Paul, writing more than 
 twenty years afterward, said that most of them 
 were still living, ready to give any who might 
 be doubters, as they had formerly been, their per- 
 sonal testimony of a sure conviction, from what 
 they had seen and heard. Indeed the appearances 
 of Christ were at intervals for all of forty days, at 
 the end of which time he was seen to ascend bodily 
 into heaven. Still later, Saul the persecutor was 
 transformed into Paul the apostle by a miraculous 
 appearance unto him on the way to Damascus. 
 
 Taking all this mass of evidence, it stands 
 
 [12] 
 
The Resurrection of Christ 
 
 overwhelmingly in favor of the resurrection, if 
 only the witnesses were trustworthy. That they 
 were good and noble, that they were sincere, no 
 one doubts. They were willing to die, and some 
 did die for the resurrection. But they may have 
 been deluded, it is suggested, for the history of 
 the different religions shows that multitudes have 
 died for a cherished doctrine. Now on doctrines, 
 opinions, people may be mistaken, but the resur- 
 rection was not a question of doctrine or opinion, 
 but of fact. To us even, it is not like original sin, 
 for instance, a matter of opinion, but of testi- 
 mony, and to the eye-witnesses themselves it was 
 not a question of testimony but of fact. The 
 senses, sight and touch, were the tests, and with 
 such tests the first witnesses declared the resur- 
 rection to have actually occurred. 
 
 But may not a man die on a question of fact 
 even, and still die for a falsehood? May not a 
 murderer die with an assertion of innocence, 
 while his guilt is positively known? Yes, but it 
 is with the hope of saving his life, that is, it is 
 for the sake of gain. But what gain was there to 
 the disciples on the question of fact? Nothing 
 but suffering and death ; in other words, there was 
 no gain. We therefore, can conclude that no event 
 in history is better attested than the resurrection 
 of Christ. The proof could not very well be 
 stronger. 
 
 The only way tot escape the force of their testi- 
 mony is to suppose that the witnesses were labor- 
 
 [13] 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 ing under some hallucination, just as now some- 
 times an individual imagines he sees things which 
 are only the creations of his disordered fancy. 
 There are fatal objections to this theory. Hallu- 
 cinations are apt to occur in the dark, where- 
 as the appearances of Christ were generally in the 
 daytime. Of the ten recorded manifestations, 
 only two of them are mentioned as occurring at 
 night, and those were at early evening meetings. 
 Moreover, hallucinations are not likely to affect 
 so many minds exactly alike. It was under dif- 
 ferent circumstances and by different persons that 
 Christ was seen. At the same time, the vision of 
 him was granted to a sufficient number simulta- 
 neously to make their evidence mutually cor- 
 roborative. One person might have been mis- 
 taken, two or three might have been, but more 
 than five hundred are not likely to have been. 
 
 Nor could the resurrection have been merely a 
 resuscitation. It was no recovery from an ap- 
 parent death, from a swoon. After a scourging 
 which was brutal in the extreme, after the sink- 
 ing under the cross, after six hours of agony 
 thereon, after the sword-thrust when the life- 
 blood followed the removal of the cold steel, and 
 after a portion of three days in a closed tomb, it 
 could have been no case of suspended animation. 
 
 Besides, if Christ did not really die and rise 
 again, he ought to have corrected that impression, 
 which certainly was made. A good man would 
 not have let any such deception go abroad. 
 
 [14] 
 
The Resurrection of Christ 
 
 Imagine Socrates, after drinking the hemlock and 
 after apparent death, reviving and then letting it 
 be published that he had risen from the dead. 
 How quickly he would be taken from the lofty 
 pedestal upon which he has been placed by an ad- 
 miring world, if he were found guilty of any 
 such trickery. Now Christ is universally es- 
 teemed and honored, as he could not and would 
 not be, if he encouraged people to- believe in his 
 resurrection, when he was never actually dead. 
 
 Moreover, his resurrection is a necessary belief 
 to explain the subsequent results. Never could 
 those few scattered disciples at the crucifixion have 
 been rallied, never would their timidity have given 
 place to a courage which faced hardship and peril 
 and persecution and death ; never would the gos- 
 pel have gone forth to such magnificent victories, 
 had it not been for the wonderful fact of Christ's 
 resurrection. It is not strange that an English 
 deist, who took up the resurrection of the Lord 
 with the intention, by establishing its falsity, of 
 overthrowing Christianity itself, became himself 
 a convert, being actually forced to believe by the 
 mass of evidence presented. With glad con- 
 fidence, therefore, we can say at each recurring 
 Easter, " The Lord is risen indeed." We can 
 accept the conclusion of the famous Doctor 
 Arnold : " I have been used for many years to 
 study the history of other times, and to examine 
 and weigh the evidences of those who have writ- 
 ten about them; and I know of no one fact in the 
 
 [15] 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 history of mankind which is proved by better 
 and fuller evidence of every sort, to the mind of 
 the fair inquirer, than that Christ died, and rose 
 again from the dead." 
 
 We thus have rightly laid our solid foundation 
 in the historic fact of the Lord's own rising, and 
 we can agree with Pres. W. Douglas Mackenzie, 
 of Hartford Theological Seminary, who has said : 
 " It seems to me a most evident fact that wher- 
 ever faith in the resurrection of Christ has dis- 
 appeared, the idealistic arguments for immor- 
 tality have begun at once to lose their convincing 
 power. The nerve of their life has been cut." 
 
 The writer has stood at the last resting-place 
 of many distinguished dead, but at only one tomb 
 has he had a sense of triumph. He has been 
 within the splendid mausoleum of General U. S. 
 Grant on New York's Riverside Drive overlook- 
 ing the lordly Hudson. He has been under the 
 dome of the diurch of the Invalides in Paris to 
 note where lie the mortal remains of Napoleon 
 the Great. He felt that both those great com- 
 manders met with ignominious and final defeat. 
 
 He has entered London's Westminster Abbey, 
 and has been filled, as Addison said in the Specta- 
 tor, " with a kind of melancholy," as the " speak- 
 ing marbles " called to mind those who had been 
 lying there anywhere from one to six hundred 
 years. He has visited the Campo Santo in 
 Genoa, where extensive corridors and artistic 
 aisles and sculptured figures remind of art gal- 
 
 [16] 
 
The Resurrection of Christ 
 
 leries with many a masterpiece, but even there 
 the tragic appears in some realistic form in 
 marble weeping over a loss to which reconcilia- 
 tion is not easy. In both these cases one feels 
 the vanity of life. 
 
 The author has likewise gone to see in Rome 
 the Pyramid of Caius Cestius, who died 30 B. C, 
 and who was slumbering beneath that identical 
 and well-preserved pile of one hundred and four- 
 teen feet in height, when Paul passed that way. 
 He has gone over the Appian way to witness a 
 round tower seventy feet in diameter, the still 
 existing tomb of Cecilia Metella, who was thus 
 commemorated two thousand years ago, and of 
 whom Byron said : 
 
 Thus much alone we know — Metella died, 
 
 The wealthiest Roman's wife : behold his love or pride. 
 
 At neither of these sights is there a triumphant 
 feeling. 
 
 We have also gone down into Egypt. We were 
 not at all impressed with the thought of victory 
 in the pyramids commemorating monarchs who 
 reigned five to six millenniums ago. We have 
 seen in a glass case at the Cairo Museum the 
 mummy of Menephtah, the supposed Pharaoh of 
 the Exodus, who, if destroyed with all his host 
 in the Red Sea. (though this is not asserted in 
 Scripture), seems to have had his body recovered 
 and embalmed, for there he lies, with his fringe 
 
 [17] 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 of white hair around the base of a bald crown, 
 and with his teeth all gone except one upper 
 front, while now none are so poor as to do him 
 reverence. There remains only a mockery of his 
 former greatness. So too, in viewing Rameses 
 the Great, the Pharaoh of the Oppression, one 
 finds himself repeating the striking lines of 
 Horace Smith: 
 
 And thou hast walked about — how strange a story ! 
 
 In Thebes' streets three thousand years ago 
 When the Memnonium was in its glory, 
 
 And time had not begun to overthrow 
 Those temples, palaces, and piles stupendous, 
 Of which the very ruins are tremendous. 
 
 Is there no other immortality -than that of such 
 mummied forms? 
 
 Or, one can go out from hundred-gated Thebes, 
 from its site, to the Tombs of the Kings, and 
 enter that of Amenophis the Second, predecessor 
 of the Pharaoh who built " Vocal Memnon," 
 which was long said to emit at daybreak a harp- 
 like sound, a fabled music that has been the in- 
 spiration of poets ever since. There he will see 
 this monarch just where he has been reposing for 
 three thousand five hundred years, his leathery 
 features to-day being illumined by an electric 
 light, shining down over him from a ceiling 
 almost as fresh in its decorations now as when 
 first made three and a half millenniums ago. 
 Surely this is a survival only of the grotesque. 
 
 [18] 
 
The Resurrection of Christ 
 
 Once more, we go to Palestine. At Bethany 
 we descend into a cave, reputed to be that from 
 which Lazarus came forth, but to which he had 
 to return. We ride out to the Saviour's birth- 
 place, and on the road we pass Rachel's tomb, not 
 improbably at the original location, and the tears 
 almost start yet at the pathetic narrative in 
 Genesis : " And Rachel died, and was buried on 
 the way to Ephrath (the same is Beth-lehem). 
 And Jacob set up a pillar upon her grave; the 
 same is the pillar of Rachel's grave unto this day." 
 Thus were human hopes blasted again. We drive 
 on to Hebron, where Abraham bought the cave of 
 Machpelah, in which to bury Sarah. Over it has 
 stood a mosque since the thirteenth century, and 
 though Turkish misrule does not allow any one 
 to enter the sepulchral cavern that is covered, 
 Dean Stanley believed that, if admission ever 
 were gained to' the innermost shrine, there would 
 be found " one at least of the patriarchal family " 
 still " intact," " the embalmed body of Jacob," 
 which he himself before his decease directed to be 
 brought thither from Egypt. But even such a 
 gruesome find would have in it nothing of vic- 
 tory. 
 
 And now finally we go to the Holy Sepulcher, 
 not to that Which Helena, the mother of the 
 Emperor Constantine, wrongly located in the 
 fourth century, and for which the Crusaders long 
 fought to rescue it from infidel hands, for that 
 is within the ancient walls of old Jerusalem. 
 
 [19] 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 Rejecting this traditional site that has been ac- 
 cepted for sixteen centuries, we follow many 
 modern scholars in identifying " the green hill far 
 away, without a city wall," with the grassy knoll 
 just outside the Damascus gate, northward of 
 the holy city. Its grottoes make cavernous eyes 
 that, aside from the rounded form of the hillock, 
 give it still more the appearance of a human 
 skull, so that it might well be called " the place 
 of a skull." Never can we forget going to this 
 Calvary. The quiet, flowering garden at its base, 
 and the rock-hewn sepulcher there, seemed to 
 meet all the conditions. Reverently we entered 
 the sacred shine, and tearfully we recalled the 
 words of the angel, '" Come, see the place where 
 the Lord lay," and the emotions excited were 
 well-nigh overwhelming. At this tomb only of 
 all those we had seen at one time or another, 
 did we have a jubilant, victorious feeling, as once 
 more through memory was heard the ringing 
 Easter message : " Why seek ye the living among 
 the dead? He is not here, but is risen." 
 
 [20] 
 
II 
 
 THE RESURRECTION IN NATURE 
 
THE RESURRECTION IN NATURE 
 
 The inspired Song of Songs in one of its most 
 exquisite descriptions says : 
 
 The flowers appear on the earth; 
 
 The time of the singing of birds is come, 
 
 And the voice of the turtle-dove is heard in our land ; 
 
 The fig-tree ripeneth her green figs, 
 
 And the vines are in blossom; 
 
 They give forth their fragrance. 
 
 John Burroughs, in a different strain, but in a 
 no less charming manner, sets forth the glory of 
 the reawakened world, when he draws this pic- 
 ture of a frequent June scene in his native Dela- 
 ware County up in the Catskills : " Where the 
 bobolinks are singing and the daisies dancing in 
 the wind, and the scent of the clover is in the 
 air, and where the boys and girls are looking for 
 wild strawberries in the grass," We are to con- 
 sider the spiritual significance of this newness of 
 life, which is an annual feature of the material- 
 istic cosmos. 
 
 The resurrection in nature every spring is pro- 
 phetic of the transfiguration awaiting redeemed 
 humanity. We can say with Thomson in his 
 " Seasons " : 
 
 [23] 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 Forth in the pleasing spring 
 Thy beauty walks, thy tenderness and love. 
 Wide flush the fields; the softening air is balm; 
 Echo the mountains round; the forest smiles; 
 And every sense and every heart is joy. 
 
 Easter fittingly comes at this jubilant season, and 
 the natural world gives at least, as Wordsworth 
 has expressed it, " Intimations of Immortality." 
 Fig tree and vine are instanced in the poetic 
 song of Solomon as examples of the reviving 
 of nature in general. What a transformation is 
 wrought in the springtime! The winter speaks 
 of northern blasts, of sleet and snow and ice, or 
 of frozen and brown vegetation everywhere, and 
 of leafless trees and cheerless landscapes. But 
 when the south winds begin to blow, the green 
 carpet of the earth is renewed, the buds swell 
 and soon unfold in fresh foliage. Fruit trees 
 come into bloom. The delicate pink and white of 
 apple blossoms appear, and every zephyr is loaded 
 with fragrance. Every breeze wafts to us sweet 
 scents and aromatic odors. A stupendous miracle 
 would the vernal and balmy spring appear, if it 
 were a sudden creation. Were the desolation of 
 winter to be changed in a night as by an en- 
 chanter's wand into the tropical beauty of the 
 next succeeding season in the rolling year, we 
 should be more impressed than we are by the 
 gradualness to which we are accustomed. If the 
 omnipotence displayed in the resurrection of na- 
 ture were fully recognized, our faith would be 
 
 [24] 
 
The Resurrection in Nature 
 
 strengthened in the promise that we too after 
 our last sleep shall awake in beauty, even in the 
 divine likeness. 
 
 Think of the power that shoots up myriads of 
 blades of grass, that makes the stripped forests 
 again to wave with a luxuriant foliage, that un- 
 loosens from their hidden receptacles all the per- 
 fumes of Arabia, and one cannot doubt that we 
 also can be changed by the same Almightiness. 
 Wolsey in his well-known lament did not give 
 the complete picture, when lie said : 
 
 This is the state of man : to-day he puts forth 
 The tender leaves of hope ; to-morrow blossoms, 
 And bears his blushing honors thick upon him: 
 The third day comes a frost, a killing frost. 
 
 He should have portrayed a spring following 
 such a winter. We may sleep in the dust of the 
 earth, our leaf may have withered and may have 
 been resolved into its constituent elements, but 
 from this apparent deadness will come, under 
 the right conditions, immortal life. A breath of 
 the Lord will blow upon the valley of dry bones, 
 and quickening energies will begin to pulsate, 
 and the springtime of human existence will have 
 come for all who have implanted in them the 
 germ of eternal life. 
 
 It will be a glad day When this mortal shall 
 have put on immortality, when winter for human- 
 ity shall have been succeeded by spring. In the 
 leafing tree, and the blossoming vine, and the 
 
 [25] 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 sweetly-scented air — in the reviving of nature 
 each year we can see assurance of a spiritual 
 process that speaks of a glorious immortality. 
 He who wakes nature can wake humanity to life 
 again, can wake the dead. He who clothes the 
 grass of the field, will much more clothe " from 
 heaven " those who derive from him their life. 
 The verdure and the bloom and the fragrance 
 given us yearly will have their counterparts in 
 the living green and sweet fields of the celestial 
 realm. 
 
 We get a similar suggestion from " the time 
 of the singing of birds." The birds have some- 
 thing to say to us of the resurrection hope. The 
 truth is imaged to us in the familiar story of 
 the phoenix, that fabled bird of antiquity, which 
 Herodotus said resembled the eagle, except that 
 it was far more gorgeous and fed on nothing 
 fleshly but on fragrant gums. Of large form and 
 resplendent plumage, it flew from distant Arabia 
 to the Egyptian city of the sun, where Joseph rose 
 to greatness. There every five hundred years, 
 according to the olden fairy tale, the magnificent 
 creature built its nest of precious woods, and 
 while spectators watched, it started about itself 
 mysterious flames, which consumed it utterly. 
 But out of the ashes rose a new phoenix of red 
 and gold, and majestically sailed away in the 
 direction whence that from which it sprang came, 
 " accompanied," said Tacitus, " by a vast retinue 
 of other birds gazing with admiration on the 
 
 [26] 
 
The Resurrection in Nature 
 
 beauteous miracle." This fiction at least repre- 
 sents a truth. As the Latin exercises of our 
 youth in our yEsop used to- say, " this fable 
 teaches " that out of the dust into- which man 
 is resolved at death rises an immortal spirit, that 
 soars away toward the sky. The inspired Job 
 himself is supposed by some to have drawn this 
 lesson from the strange bird of which the ancients 
 wrote so much. This is the patriarch's significant 
 language as found in the margin of the Revised 
 Version : 
 
 Then I said, I shall die in my nest, 
 
 And I shall multiply my days as the phcenix. 
 
 If not really from their ashes, how from a prac- 
 tical death the birds do come every spring ! They 
 are dead to us during the long winter, but at its 
 close what multitudes of them appear, and by 
 their warbled songs they speak to us of a more 
 genial clime than the wintry one of death. 
 
 The Master inculcated a spirit of trust from 
 the sparrows. In countless numbers they still are 
 seen in the Holy Land, where they were so 
 numerous in the time of Christ. They doubtless 
 then as now twittered everywhere, being re- 
 garded as much of a nuisance as English spar- 
 rows are at present. In Palestine to-day they 
 are so thick and tame that they get under the 
 very feet of the pedestrian. If they are trampled 
 to death, it makes no difference. They are 
 crushed almost as so many worms. Anciently 
 
 [27] 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 they were considered the most worthless of all 
 birds, and five of them sold for two farthings. 
 And yet, we are assured, not one of them fell to 
 the ground without the Father's notice. God did 
 not overlook the death of a sparrow. What un- 
 numbered millions of people have crossed the 
 stage of action! Sometimes it seems to us, as 
 if, to use an expression of Henry Ward Beecher, 
 they were swept into eternity like so many dead 
 flies. At any rate, the numerous deaths in the 
 human race seem to the skeptical mind as un- 
 worthy of the divine attention as all the sparrows 
 which each year are swept from the face of the 
 earth. God, however, does note the fall of the 
 very sparrows, of the least of birds, and each 
 spring he brings them all again. We more liter- 
 ally than they, more truly than the phoenix, shall 
 rise out of the graves of winter, out of the ashes 
 of death, at the springtime of the resurrection. 
 
 So at last, when he appeareth, 
 We from out our graves may spring, 
 
 With our youth renewed like eagles, 
 Flocking round our heavenly King. 
 
 The instinctive longing which we have for a 
 better clime, the aspiration which we have for 
 heaven — this instinct for immortality was not 
 planted in vain in the human breast. The in- 
 stinct which prompts the birds at the coming of 
 winter to spread their wings for a warmer climate 
 makes it certain that the feathered songsters will 
 
 [28] 
 
The Resurrection in Nature 
 
 not go south, and will not come north in the 
 spring, to be disappointed; the instinct is safe 
 and unerring. Will God be kinder to- birds than 
 to human beings? He cares much more for us 
 than for the fowls of the air. If he has some- 
 thing to answer to the migratory instinct of the 
 birds, we may be sure that our expectation of a 
 better country, of a fair summerland, will not 
 meet with disappointment. The spirit that rises 
 in Christian faith from the ashes of human mor- 
 tality and soars away toward the sky, is going to 
 find the blessedness anticipated. This should be 
 our assurance, as we listen to the singing of birds, 
 to the voice of the turtle-dove, to the joyous notes 
 of bluebird and robin and the various songsters 
 of the spring. 
 
 How unbelieving some are is indicated by Jere- 
 miah, when he says : " The stork in the heavens 
 knoweth her appointed times ; and the turtle-dove 
 and the swallow and the crane observe the time 
 of their coming; but my people know not the 
 law of Jehovah.' ' Take only one of these here 
 named, the first. At Strassburg more interesting 
 perhaps than the wonderful astronomical clock 
 there, with its moving figures of the apostles and 
 with its crowing cock to remind of Peter's denial 
 of the Lord, is the stork, which is as sacred 
 to that German city as the pigeons of St. Mark's 
 are to Venice. The bird can be seen sitting 
 statuesque on more than one chimney. " The 
 winter finds her," says one writer, " far away 
 
 [29] 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 among the highlands of Ethiopia. When the 
 appointed day comes, as if moved by a divine in- 
 spiration she spreads her wings for her long flight. 
 A thousand miles down the valley of the Nile, a 
 thousand more across the whole breadth of the 
 Mediterranean Sea, and on still over Alps and 
 Apennines, over sunny vineyards and snowy 
 mountains to Holland and Denmark, and over the 
 Baltic to Sweden and Norway, the stork pursues 
 her aerial journey till she finds the same old tower 
 and rebuilds the nest of the former year. And 
 the bird," continues my informant, " would 
 sooner die than shorten the journey or fail to 
 start at the appointed time. No matter what 
 storms may darken the air, or what sunny climes 
 may invite her to rest on the way, she goes, 
 guided by a mysterious and divine instinct, 
 straight to her old home, and never rests till 
 there." 
 
 There is in this vivid picture a beautiful lesson 
 of how the soul, divinely guided, returns to God 
 whence it came. Let it but follow the directions 
 of the still small voice heard within, and it will 
 never falter or stop in its flight upward, till it rests 
 in the bosom of God, till it finds its nest beyond 
 the stars, in that "home of the soul." Beings 
 with the migratory instinct for heaven are not 
 going to be put to shame at the last. Cicero 
 well said, " The consent of all is the voice of 
 nature, and since all men everywhere agree in 
 believing that there is something within us which 
 
 [30] 
 
The Resurrection in Nature 
 
 survives the grave, we must accept it as the 
 truth." Addison was right in representing Cato 
 sitting thoughtfully with Plato on immortality in 
 hand, and musing thus : 
 
 It must be so, — Plato, thou reasonest well! 
 Else whence this pleasing hope, this fond desire, 
 This longing after immortality? 
 
 We, therefore, can appreciate William Cullen 
 Bryant's " Ode to a Waterfowl " : 
 
 Thou art gone, the abyss of heaven 
 
 Hath swallowed up thy form, but on my heart 
 
 Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given, 
 And shall not soon depart. 
 
 He who, from zone to zone, 
 
 Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, 
 In the long way that I must tread alone, 
 
 Will lead my steps aright. 
 
 Preeminently does the spring testify that " the 
 flowers appear on the earth." These speak of 
 springing beauty. They might all be character- 
 ized as immortelles, for they are ever rising from 
 the dead. Take particularly a familiar but un- 
 sightly bulb, that looks as much like an onion as 
 anything, and we put it in the ground, or into a 
 pot of rich soil, and it rises out of its earthen 
 bed, develops a green stalk, and flowers into a 
 pure white lily, which does service at Easter 
 decorations, where blossoms seem to vie with one 
 another in honor of the happy anniversary. This 
 
 [313 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 is an image of how the mortal may blossom out 
 into the immortal. Or consider what is some- 
 times supposed to sip the sweetness oi the flowers, 
 the lovely butterfly, and from what did it come ? 
 From an ugly-looking caterpillar, or wormlike 
 larva, crawling here and there. It sheds its skin 
 and becomes a chrysalis, a seemingly dead little 
 bundle of material done up in a kind of case. We 
 can toss it up into the air, and catch it in our 
 hand again, as if it were a bit of stick, and 
 nothing could seem more utterly lifeless. But by 
 successive stages from that lump of inert matter 
 comes a gauzy creature with exquisitely tinted 
 wings, a thing of beauty, which soars in the 
 air, basks in the sunshine, alights on the flowers, 
 and floats hither and thither to charm every be- 
 holder. With these wonders in the flowery king- 
 dom, it need not be thought incredible that God 
 should raise the human dead. 
 
 The flowers invite to faith with reference to 
 the life immortal. Mungo Park, the Scottish 
 traveler, was once robbed in Africa and left 
 to die in the wilderness. Despoiled of every- 
 thing, abandoned for dead five hundred miles 
 from a European settlement, he was about to 
 yield to what seemed to be his fate, a lonely 
 death in the desert, when he noticed a delicate 
 little flower blooming by his side. Thereupon he 
 said to himself, " Can that Being who planted, 
 watered, and brought to perfection this small 
 flower in Vhis obs^re part of the world, look with 
 
 [32] 
 
The Resurrection in Nature 
 
 unconcern upon the condition and sufferings of 
 one made in his own image?" With such in- 
 spiration from what did not " waste its sweetness 
 on the desert air," he struggled back to life and 
 civilization once more. No more will that Being 
 let any such highly endowed creation of his sink 
 forever into the dust, to rise no more. We are 
 taught better than that by the very lilies of the 
 field springing each season from the black ground. 
 Both the flowers and the butterflies that light 
 thereon speak of wondrous transformations that 
 are possible for humanity. Corresponding to the 
 butterfly for us was the scarabaeus for the ancient 
 Egyptians. When in 1905 it was my privilege to 
 be in the land of the Nile, as with every visitor 
 there it was my desire to secure some souvenir 
 of the country of the Pharaohs. The most char- 
 acteristic thing that can be carried away is a 
 scarab, and the one purchased by me was pro- 
 nounced genuine by experts both in the Cairo and 
 British Museums. It bears the cartouche of 
 Thotmes the Third, who reigned thirty-five hun- 
 dred years ago, who was noted as the great ob- 
 elisk-maker, who set up in Heliopolis that particu- 
 lar obelisk now standing in Central Park of New 
 York City. Why is a scarab of his worn proudly 
 by me on my watch-chain above my Phi Beta 
 Kappa key? Because it speaks of immortality. 
 The Egyptian scarabaeus was a beetle, which de- 
 posited its eggs in a ball of stable refuse, whose 
 fermentation produced the necessary warmth for 
 
 [33] 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 hatching. When the ancients saw life in due time 
 coming from a seemingly dead pinch or globule 
 of earthly matter, they naturally took the scara- 
 baeus as an emblem of immortality, as we do the 
 butterfly emerging from its chrysalis, and scarabs 
 of clay and of precious stones, often inscribed 
 with the name of the owner who thus could use 
 his ornament as a seal, were manufactured in 
 great numbers, and may have served for the visit- 
 ing cards of antiquity. Such an antique is mine, 
 and it speaks not only of the three and a half 
 millenniums, which have elapsed since it was 
 made, but of the countless ages that are to come 
 in that eternity, of which Christians are to be 
 the happy denizens. 
 
 The Rev. Maltbie D. Babcock, D. D., whose un- 
 timely taking off while abroad was so pathetic, 
 has left this witness as to his deathless hope from 
 what he had discerned in nature: 
 
 O little bulb, uncouth, 
 
 Ragged and rusty brown, 
 Have you some dew of youth? 
 Have you a crimson gown? 
 Plant me and see 
 What I shall be— 
 God's fine surprise 
 Before your eyes ! 
 
 O fuzzy ugliness, 
 
 Poor, helpless crawling worm, 
 Can any loveliness 
 
 Be in that sluggish form? 
 
 [34] 
 
The Resurrection in Nature 
 
 Hide me and see 
 What I shall be— 
 God's bright surprise 
 Before your eyes ! 
 
 O body wearing out, 
 
 A crumbling house of clay! 
 O agony of doubt 
 And darkness and dismay! 
 Trust God and see 
 What I shall be— 
 His best surprise 
 Before your eyes ! 
 
 Do we have arguments in these various sug- 
 gestions from nature? No, but we do have that 
 which is corroborative of what is otherwise es- 
 tablished, fancy giving some confirmation to 
 fact. We have all that was claimed at the be- 
 ginning of the chapter, namely, "intimations of 
 immortality," and with the poet who coined for 
 us this expressive phrase we can repeat : 
 
 To me the meanest flower that blows can give 
 Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. 
 
 The force of the present representation of the 
 Easter truth has been felt in ancient and modern 
 times alike, by both a Cicero and an Emerson. 
 When the celebrated orator lost by death his 
 daughter Tullia in the full bloom of her young 
 womanhood, he longed to see again the idol of 
 his heart, and he retired to his Tusculum villa, 
 and tried to reassure himself in the faith that 
 
 [35] 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 there would be a happy reunion in the hereafter, 
 and this was the classic statement of his hope: 
 " Man's grand ideals are overtures of immortal- 
 ity, because they require and demand immortality 
 for their realization.' ' The Concord philosopher 
 similarly said: "Instincts and automatic forces 
 in man are God's books of directions. Aspira- 
 tions are liens upon immortal life, and they are 
 stepping-stones, that slope through the darkness 
 up to God. The planting of a desire indicates 
 that the gratification of that desire is in the con- 
 stitution of the creature that feels it. It is there 
 structurally. The Creator keeps his word with 
 everything and everybody." 
 
 The historian Prescott, writing in 1843 to 
 Charles Sumner, on the death of a lovely daugh- 
 ter of the latter, said in harmony with the idea 
 herein being set forth : " If any argument were 
 needed, the existence and extinction here of such 
 a being would of itself be enough to establish the 
 immortality of the soul. It would seem as rea- 
 sonable to suppose, that the blossom, with its 
 curious organization and its tendencies to a fuller 
 development, should be designated to perish in 
 this immature state, as that such a soul, with the 
 germ of such celestial existence within it, should 
 not be destined for a further and more noble ex- 
 pansion." 
 
 William Jennings Bryan has been no less 
 felicitous in giving expression to this thought 
 in the following fashion : " If the Father deigns to 
 
 [36] 
 
The Resurrection in Nature 
 
 touch with divine power the cold and pulseless 
 heart of the buried acorn and to make it burst 
 forth from its prison walls, will he leave neglected 
 in the earth the soul of man, made in the image 
 of his Creator? If he stoops to give to the rose- 
 bush, whose withered blossoms float upon the 
 autumn breeze, the sweet assurance of another 
 springtime, will he refuse the words of hope to 
 the sons of men, when the frosts of winter come ? 
 If matter mute and inanimate, though changed 
 by the forces of nature into a multitude of forms, 
 can never die, will the spirit of man suffer anni- 
 hilation when it has paid a brief visit like a royal 
 guest to this tenement of clay ? " 
 
 Speaking of inanimate nature, and its persis- 
 tence, we all must have been struck time and again 
 with the long continuance of some trees. Thom- 
 son in his " Land and the Book " speaks of cedars 
 of Lebanon, which " have been growing ever since 
 the Flood." These monarchs of the forest are 
 like the mammoth trees of California, like those 
 which have been seen by me near Santa Cruz, or 
 like those at Mariposa in the approach to the 
 Yosemite Valley. When we reflect how many 
 generations of men have passed, since these rooted 
 themselves in the soil, it is then that the irony 
 of our brief earthly existence appears. An En- 
 glish oak will stand for seven centuries or more, 
 as against the fleeting three or five or seven 
 decades of him created in the image of God. In 
 the Giant Forest of the Pacific slope is many a 
 
 [37] 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 sequoia, which has been lifting its green branches 
 into the air anywhere from five to eight thousand 
 years, for a longer time than the historic period of 
 the whole race. Must we be shorter-lived than 
 the insensible tree? Nay, through the immor- 
 tality derived from him who is the resurrection 
 and the life, we shall be longer-lived than cedar of 
 Lebanon, or oak of England, or redwood of 
 California. A million years may roll away, and 
 still, planted beside the river of God, our leaf shall 
 " not wither." 
 
 Nature, which we have been considering, in 
 one way or another is always opening up vistas 
 of hope for the longing spirit, as she does, for 
 instance, at The Balsams in the upper White 
 Mountains region. Never was there spot lovelier 
 or fuller of suggestion. In the immediate fore- 
 ground is the shimmering and dimpled surface 
 of Lake Gloriette, fair as untroubled young child- 
 hood. Just beyond is Dixville Notch with its 
 sterner aspects that remind us of our maturer 
 years. We feel that we must penetrate the narrow 
 defile with its deep and shadowy and cool seclu- 
 sions, with its sunlit and wooded 'heights, with 
 its towering and frowning rocks. In softly hum- 
 ming automobile we do explore it in order to see 
 what lies beyond, and we find broad, open spaces, 
 and green meadows and fruitful fields and all that 
 is sweetly inviting. Equally alluring is life, when 
 we get its true perspective, when we take in its 
 mysterious heights and depths, and we are con- 
 
 [38] 
 
The Resurrection in Nature 
 
 fident that the future has for us ever richer 
 disclosures. We can say with Tennyson, 
 
 Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward, let 
 
 us range, 
 Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves 
 
 of change. 
 
 In the vicissitudes and varied experiences of the 
 present, there is always beckoning to us through 
 the Notch, down which we are coursing, some- 
 thing better and brighter in the sweet fields of liv- 
 ing green that are promised, and in the splendor 
 ineffable that lies thereon. With this beatific 
 revelation that comes to us through a bit of 
 natural scenery, we can further say with the 
 Englist poet, 
 
 For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see, 
 Saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that 
 would be. 
 
 [39] 
 
m 
 
 IMMORTALITY AND THE 
 RESURRECTION 
 
IMMORTALITY AND THE 
 RESURRECTION 
 
 The search for immortality has been as per- 
 sistent as the quest of the Holy Grail. There has 
 been no difference in this respect between the 
 Orient and the Occident, between ancient and 
 modern times. At a comparatively recent date 
 on our American continent we have the romance 
 and the tragedy of Ponce de Leon, who came with 
 Columbus on the latter's second voyage of dis- 
 covery. He had often heard of the stories cur- 
 rent regarding a fountain of youth, and if it could 
 be found all who might drink of its wondrous 
 waters would remain forever young, would be- 
 come endued with immortality. From what some 
 Indians said he thought the famous fountain 
 might be in a land that lay to the north. He ac- 
 cordingly sailed in that direction, and on March 
 2 7> IS 1 ^* on Easter Sunday for that year, he first 
 sighted coasts which had indeed been seen a few 
 years earlier, but which did not till then receive 
 their christening, being called Florida from the 
 Spanish for Feast of Flowers, this being only an- 
 other name for Easter. 
 
 On the auspicious anniversary of the Lord's 
 resurrection, it seemed likely that the land con- 
 
 [43] 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 taining the long-sought fountain of youth had 
 been found. At St. Augustine in the Easter 
 State of summer flowers that are perpetual, there 
 is a magnificent: hotel bearing the name of Ponce 
 de Leon, but that is the only immortality that he 
 secured. What he so eagerly sought did not 
 materialize any more than does the once fancied 
 pot of gold at the foot of the rainbow. So far 
 from drinking of waters that made him live for- 
 ever, in that very land of flowers where he went 
 eight years later to establish a colony, he was 
 furiously attacked by Indians, and a flint arrow 
 lodged in his thigh made him return to Cuba, 
 where after excruciating pain he died from the 
 wound received. Though he failed in his quest, 
 others have been more successful, pursuing their 
 search in the high domain of thought and fact. 
 The question is, Where can we get the most light 
 on immortality and the resurrection ? 
 
 Benjamin Franklin had thirteen rules for the 
 ordering of his life, and though he was a free- 
 thinker the last one was this, " Imitate Jesus and 
 Socrates/' To these two we are more indebted 
 than to any others for our knowledge of the 
 future. The one through Plato gives us all the 
 information which the classic world could furnish, 
 and the other, through Paul especially, transmits 
 to us all that light with which Christendom is 
 flooded. We are to sit for a little at the feet of 
 the two most distinguished teachers who ever 
 walked the streets of highly favored Athens. 
 
 [44] 
 
Immortality and the Resurrection 
 
 Philosopher and apostle, as they taught in that 
 city, are to be our guides- 
 First, we will notice the parallel in the cir- 
 cumstances of each, rendering the more impres- 
 sive what they had to say. Socrates claimed to 
 have the guidance of a divine monitor. The ac- 
 cusation against him, as we learn from his 
 Apology, was, " He does not believe in the gods 
 of the state, and has other new divinities of his 
 own." He made the best argument for immor- 
 tality which has come down from antiquity, but 
 he was condemned by the Athenians, who more 
 than four hundred years afterward at the preach- 
 ing of " Jesus and the resurrection " had the same 
 charge to make, the same objection to raise against 
 the setting forth "of strange gods." 
 
 On this ground the philosopher of old received 
 the death-sentence. His execution was deferred 
 for a month, till the return of a ship, which an- 
 nually made a voyage to a sacred shrine. His life 
 was to be spared for that length of time, as sub- 
 sequently Christ's was to be " till after the feast." 
 In his imprisonment he daily had the companion- 
 ship of beloved disciples, through one of whom 
 he had the opportunity of escaping the very night 
 before the end, but he did not avail himself of 
 this chance. He had no fear of death, and was 
 peacefully slumbering when his friend came to 
 him before daylight with the proposed plan for a 
 secret departure. He remained in the prison, and 
 spent the last day of his life in talking to a few 
 
 [45] 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 of his disciples, who were with him, about immor- 
 tality. " As I am going to another place," he 
 said, " I ought to be thinking of the nature of 
 the pilgrimage which I am about to make. What 
 can I do better in the interval between this and the 
 setting of the sun? " We are reminded of Christ, 
 the night before his death, discoursing to his dis- 
 ciples about the house of many mansions. 
 
 As the divine Master had a John to lean upon 
 his bosom, so the philosopher in his little circle 
 had a Phaedo, who bears this testimony : " I was 
 close to him on his right hand, seated on a sort of 
 stool, and he on a couch which was a good deal 
 higher. Now he had a way of playing with my 
 hair, and then he smoothed my head, and pressed 
 the hair upon my neck, and said, To-morrow, 
 Phaedo, I sppose that these fair locks of yours will 
 be severed," that is, in mourning for the death of 
 Socrates. Aa the disciple, who reclined on the 
 breast of Jesus, wrote the Fourth Gospel which 
 contains the marvelous discourse at the Last Sup- 
 per, so it was Phaedo, with whose hair Socrates 
 had affectionately toyed — it was he, of whom the 
 request was made by an acquaintance, " I wish 
 that you would tell me about his death. What did 
 he say in his last hours ? " It was in response to 
 this that the charming narrative was given, and 
 Plato clothed it in the matchless language with 
 which it was conveyed to the Athenians, and to 
 all the generations since. 
 
 In the same city of Athens Paul stood up, and 
 
 [46] 
 
Immortality and the Resurrection 
 
 spoke of " Jesus and the resurrection," thus do- 
 ing* for John what Plato did for Phaedo, acquaint- 
 ing the Athenians with what they otherwise might 
 have remained ignorant of; but they gave no 
 more heed to " Jesus and the resurrection " than 
 they did nearly five centuries before to Socrates 
 and his doctrine of immortality. Subsequent 
 ages, however, have been profoundly impressed 
 by both, and especially in view of the touching 
 circumstances under which they spoke. 
 
 Socrates had scarcely finished his conversation 
 about immortality, when there came the last scene 
 in his life. He bade farewell to* his wife and 
 children, who were completely overcome. Even 
 the jailer, who came in to announce that his hour 
 had come, burst into tears. The cup of poison 
 was brought, which, says the narrator who was in 
 the prison and witnessed all, he took " in the 
 easiest and gentlest manner, without the least fear 
 or change of color or feature." Then " cheer- 
 fully he drank off the poison." At the swallowing 
 of the fatal draught, the friends could no longer 
 control their emotions, the tears flowed freely. 
 Phaedo covered his face and wept, and from one 
 there was a passionate outburst of grief, which the 
 dying man asked to have cease. He walked 
 calmly about the cell till his limbs refused to 
 carry him, and then he lay down. 
 
 The executioner examined him from time to 
 time, pressing his foot hard and asking him if he 
 felt it, and the lower limbs, over which Socrates 
 
 [47] 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 himself passed his hands, saying, " When the 
 poison reaches the heart, that will be the end/' 
 When the coldness had reached his groins, he 
 looked up and asked Crito to pay a small debt 
 which he owed, and which at the moment came to 
 mind. " The debt shall be paid," said Crito, 
 " is there anything else ? " There was no answer, 
 but presently there was a convulsive movement, 
 and immediately the eyes set, he was dead. 
 
 How impressive the teaching of immortality 
 by lips which were so soon to be closed in death ! 
 Likewise He who told his sorrowing disciples not 
 to be troubled, who asked the women not to weep 
 for him, who affectionately commended his 
 mother bathed in tears to the beloved disciple, and 
 who died upon the cross — lie spoke of the 'heavenly 
 mansions to which he was going, of a triumphant 
 rising from the dead, and the resurrection ever 
 since has had a most precious significance. 
 
 The Athenians gave no credence, no acceptance, 
 to the preacher of immortality, nor to the preacher 
 of the resurrection. Of each they said contemp- 
 tuously, " He seemeth to be a setter forth of 
 strange gods." The proud city rejected both 
 Socrates and Jesus, but we whose citizenship is 
 in beaven are of a better mind. We thoroughly 
 believe what the classic philosopher obscurely 
 taught, and what the Son of God clearly demon- 
 strated, and what the apostle preached, and the 
 result is a glad Easter each year. Immortality 
 was brought to light in the resurrection, and these 
 
 [48] 
 
Immortality and the Resurrection 
 
 were taught by the two greatest moral instructors 
 to whom the world has listened, and under cir- 
 cumstances which made what they said have all 
 the weight of dying testimony, when the soul 
 has its clearest vision, and seems to catch glimpses 
 of the hereafter from the Delectable Mountains 
 of the fair Beulah land overlooking the celestial 
 Canaan. We read most truly in Richard the 
 Second 
 
 The tongues of dying men 
 
 Enforce attention, like deep harmony: 
 
 When words are scarce, they're seldom spent in vain; 
 
 For they breathe truth that breathe their words in pain. 
 
 We turn next to the teachings themselves, as 
 they appear aside from the accompanying circum- 
 stances, and in their own strength. Now Socrates 
 was not altogether certain as to what the future 
 might bring forth. In his address to his judges, 
 he hoped that he was going to join Orpheus, and 
 Homer, and Ajax, and other deceased worthies. 
 "What infinite delight would there be in con- 
 versing with them and asking them questions! " 
 was his enraptured exclamation. But he was 
 not absolutely sure that such was to be his happy 
 destiny. He did not know but that death might 
 be a dreamless sleep through an eternal night, 
 and he thought that would be a " gain." He, 
 however, was not positive that so much blessed- 
 ness as that was to' be his, for he closed his cele- 
 brated Apology with these words : " The hour 
 of my departure has arrived, and we go our ways, 
 
 [49] 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 I to die, and you to live. Which is better God 
 only knows/' 
 
 His brain was racked by the awful uncertainty, 
 which has since led a Hamlet to soliloquize : 
 
 To be, or not to be: that is the question: 
 
 by a sleep, to say we end 
 The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks 
 That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation 
 Devoutly to be wish'd. To die : to sleep ; 
 To sleep : perchance to dream : ay, there's the rub ; 
 For in that sleep of death what dreams may come 
 When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, 
 Must give us pause: 
 
 And make us rather bear those ills we have 
 Than fly to others that we know not of. 
 
 All of us have more or less of this feeling; 
 Socrates had it, although toward the last he grew 
 more confident of his immortality. Still in his 
 great argument therefor on the last day of his 
 life, he acknowledged that he was trying to con- 
 vince himself primarily, and others secondarily. 
 
 What is the gist of the splendid argument 
 which he used? He had substantially the same 
 classes to meet that Paul had to encounter in the 
 Epicureans and Stoics. Those schools were not 
 as yet known by these names, but they existed in 
 the germ, as they still continue to exist in the 
 completed systems of materialism and pantheism. 
 
 [50] 
 
Immortality and the Resurrection 
 
 Both these deny, as they always have denied, a 
 personal future existence, maintaining that indi- 
 viduals at death are resolved back into that gen- 
 eral substance from which they sprang, as drops 
 of rain lose their identity in the ocean from which 
 they originally came. There is no personal God, 
 much less is there any human personality, and we 
 are merged at our dissolution into our native ele- 
 ment of unconscious being. It is claimed that what 
 is called the soul has a physical basis, and when 
 the body perishes, it also does. 
 
 This was the difficulty which Socrates had to 
 meet and overcome satisfactorily, the incredulous 
 of his day saying of the spirit, " immediately on 
 the release from the body issuing forth like smoke 
 or air and vanishing away into- nothingness." 
 The most striking illustration of the ancient skep- 
 tics was this: The soul seems superior to and 
 independent of the body, but is it not analogous 
 to a harmony and the lyre producing the same? 
 Since music is so much finer than the instrument, 
 it would be very natural to suppose that the former 
 must survive the latter. Surely that which so 
 charms all cannot perish, when the mere strings 
 to which it is mechanically related are broken. 
 After this manner, say materialists and pantheists, 
 Epicureans and Stoics, do Socratic minds argue, 
 that the superb soul must survive the body when 
 the silver cords of physical life are loosed. That 
 seems plausible, but, it is insisted, no one imagines 
 that the harmony continues somewhere in the uni- 
 
 [so 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 verse after the lyre has been destroyed; neither 
 can the soul continue after the body has been 
 unstrung by death. As surely as the music has 
 forever flown when the instrument is destroyed, 
 so has the soul when the body perishes. 
 
 That was the forcible figure which carried con- 
 sternation to the disciples of Socrates, and ap- 
 parently to himself for a while. We too see the 
 force of the illustration. The soul does seem to 
 vanish with the dissolving of the body, even as 
 the music does with the destruction of the instru- 
 ment, notwithstanding the apparent superiority of 
 the harmony to the lyre, and of the spiritual to 
 the material, or of mind to matter. 
 
 But Socrates was not vanquished; he led his 
 forces to the field of argument again, as a general 
 rallies, we are told, his defeated and broken army. 
 In other words, he declared and showed that the 
 cases were not analogous, though they might 
 seem to be. A harmony, he maintained, is solely 
 the production of the strings of the lyre, it has 
 no power over them so as to resist them in the 
 least. But the soul does have control of the affec- 
 tions of the body ; it can say to thirst, Thou shalt 
 not drink; and to desire, Thou shalt not be grati- 
 fied. To set forth the difference in Socratic lan- 
 guage, " a harmony can never utter a note at 
 variance with the tensions and relaxations and 
 vibrations and other affections of the strings out 
 of which she is composed; she can only follow, 
 she cannot lead them." That is true of a har- 
 
 [52] 
 
Immortality and the Resurrection 
 
 mony, but, he says, we " discover the soul to 
 be doing the exact opposite — leading the elements 
 of which she is believed to be composed ; almost 
 always opposing and coercing them in all sorts 
 of ways throughout life." Well does the philoso- 
 pher sum up by saying, that the soul is " a far 
 diviner thing than any harmony." That is, he 
 conclusively proves that the cases are not anal- 
 ogous, of the soul perishing with the body as 
 music does with the instrument. 
 
 After all, the argument of Socrates, grand as 
 it is for a pagan without the light of revelation, 
 is negative. He shows how the soul is not likely 
 to perish in the way supposed by his opponents, by 
 Epicureans and Stoics, by materialists and pan- 
 theists, but he does not demonstrate how the soul 
 certainly is to exist after death. He has to con- 
 fess that, in view of his own nearness to eternity, 
 he is trying the best he can to fortify his own long- 
 ings. He did not convince the Athenians, who 
 saw in him only a promulgator of an improbable 
 theory. Unanswerable, however, was the argu- 
 ment of the apostle, when he preached " Jesus and 
 the resurrection." As he did to* the Corinthians, 
 he must have brought forward the solid array of 
 facts furnished by the witnesses of the Lord 
 having actually risen from the dead. Ever since, 
 we have been moving on firm ground, since in the 
 first century there were so many who spake that 
 whereof they knew : " that which we have heard, 
 that which we have seen with our eyes, that which 
 
 [53] 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 we beheld, and our hands handled, concerning the 
 Word of Life." 
 
 Ours can be the faith of Tennyson in 'his " In 
 Memoriam " : 
 
 Thou wilt not leave me in the dust ; 
 
 Thou madest man, he knows not why ; 
 
 He thinks he was not made to die ; 
 And thou hast made him: thou art just. 
 
 All must feel the force of what Dr. George A. 
 Gordon has said : " The Christian idea of the 
 future life is not happily expressed by the phrase, 
 immortality of the soul. Soul stands for the seat 
 of thought, feeling, activity ; body for the instru- 
 ment of manifestation, the passive principle in the 
 service of the active. This is the complete life 
 here, and the Christian idea is that the complete 
 life there will be analogous. Thought, and feel- 
 ing, and activity will have in the future a mode 
 of manifestation, a form of being, an instrument 
 of service, like that which they have in this 
 world." 
 
 With the prospect of an undoubted resurrec- 
 tion to follow death, we can celebrate Easter 
 with gladness. Socrates himself, with his uncer- 
 tain immortality, drew near the end with re- 
 joicing. Will you not allow me, he asks ex- 
 ultingly, to have the spirit of swans? "For 
 they," he says, " when they perceive that they 
 must die, having sung all their life long, do 
 then sing more than ever, rejoicing in the 
 
 [54] 
 
Immortality and the Resurrection 
 
 thought that they are about to go away." And 
 he insists that the song is not a " lament," since, 
 he adds, " no bird sings when cold, or hungry, or 
 in pain, not even the nightingale." 
 
 He would not have approved of this sentiment 
 by Tennyson: 
 
 With an inner voice the river ran, 
 Adown it floated a dying swan, 
 And loudly did lament. 
 
 He would have felt that the English poet struck 
 the true key, when he wrote of the bird farther 
 down the stream : 
 
 But anon her awful jubilant voice, 
 With a music strange and manifold, 
 Flow'd forth on a carol free and bold; 
 
 And the silvery marish-flowers that throng 
 The desolate creeks and pools among, 
 Were flooded over with eddying song. 
 
 Thus did Socrates with his belief in immortality 
 claim to be floating down the current of life to- 
 ward death, and we, holding to a more glorious 
 resurrection, can with greater joy fulness ap- 
 proach the end. Byron was only giving poetic 
 expression to the Scripture, 
 
 Let me die the death of the righteous, 
 And let my last end be like his, 
 
 when he said, " swanlike, let me sing and die." 
 When one is being rapidly borne down the 
 
 [553 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 stream toward eternity, he can think of the resur- 
 rection, and go singing along, and his hymn of 
 life will attain its most jubilant pitch at death, 
 and this is his swan's song: 
 
 My life flows on in endless song; 
 
 Above earth's lamentation, 
 I catch the sweet, though far-off hymn 
 
 That hails a new creation. 
 
 Through all the tumult and the strife, 
 
 I hear the music ringing; 
 It finds an echo in my soul — 
 
 How can I keep from singing? 
 
 What though my joys and comforts die? 
 
 The Lord my Saviour liveth; 
 What though the darkness gather round? 
 
 Songs in the night he giveth. 
 
 [56] 
 
IV 
 THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY 
 
THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY 
 
 With the ancient heathen philosophers immor- 
 tality was something shadowy. Disembodied 
 spirits wandered ghostlike amid the eternal 
 shades. Beyond this abstract idea as to the 
 future, the belief that man is to> live again with 
 a body was more or less prevalent, especially 
 among the Hebrews. Paul taught that we are 
 not to be specters in the universe, but that our 
 mortal bodies are to be quickened. 
 
 Nor is this belief unscientific. Sir Oliver 
 Lodge, among the foremost in the realm of 
 science, has expressed himself in this fashion: 
 " Christianity both by its doctrines and its cere- 
 monies rightly emphasizes the material aspect of 
 existence. For it is founded upon the idea of 
 incarnation ; and its belief in some sort of bodily 
 resurrection is based on the idea that every real 
 personal existence must have a double aspect — 
 not spiritual alone, nor physical alone, but in 
 some way both. Such an opinion, in a refined 
 form, is common to many systems of philosophy, 
 and is by no means out of harmony with science. 
 Christianity, therefore, reasonably supplements 
 the mere survival of a discarnate spirit, a home- 
 less wanderer or melancholy ghost, with the warm 
 
 [59] 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 and comfortable clothing of something that may 
 legitimately be spoken of as a body." 
 
 Is the present body to be raised ? Many would 
 immediately answer in the negative. They 
 openly dissent from that article in the Apostles' 
 Creed expressing a belief " in the resurrection 
 of the body." While we cannot be dogmatic 
 here, the general trend of Scripture would seem 
 to force assent to that, at least for substance of 
 doctrine. The Pauline and biblical representa- 
 tion would seem to be that burial is not the last 
 of what is committed to the ground. The ques- 
 tion is, Need faith stagger at a bodily resurrec- 
 tion in some real though not strictly literalistic 
 sense? Franklin's epitaph, written by himself, 
 says: "The body of Benjamin Franklin, printer, 
 . . lies here food for worms; yet the work itself 
 shall not be lost, for it will (as he believed) ap- 
 pear once more in a new and more beautiful edi- 
 tion, corrected and amended by the author." We 
 shall endeavor to see how the Christian hope as 
 cherished for ages on this point may not be in 
 its essential features unreasonable. 
 
 We have to meet at the very outset that un- 
 equivocal declaration of the Lord himself, " All 
 that are in the tombs shall hear his voice, and 
 shall come forth." Just to what extent there is 
 to be a recovery from bodily dissolution, we may 
 not be able to say, but certain analogies would 
 seem to justify a large faith. Dr. David Gregg 
 has used this illustration (which, of course, must 
 
 [60] 
 
The Resurrection of the Body- 
 not be pressed too far) from the workshop of 
 a celebrated scientist : " One day when Faraday 
 was out, a workman accidentally knocked into 
 a jar of acid a silver cup. It disappeared and 
 was eaten up by the acid, and could not be found. 
 The acid held it in solution. The workman was 
 in great distress and perplexity. It was an utter 
 mystery to him where the cup had gone. So far 
 as his knowledge went, it had gone out of exis- 
 tence forever. When the great chemist came in 
 and heard the story, he threw some chemicals 
 into the jar, and in a moment every particle of 
 silver was precipitated to the bottom. He then 
 lifted out the silver nugget and sent it to the smith, 
 where it was recast into a beautiful cup. If a 
 finite chemist," continues my informant, " can 
 handle the particles of a silver cup in this way, 
 what cannot the infinite Chemist do with the 
 particles of a human body, when dissolved in 
 the great jar of the universe? He can handle 
 the universe as easily as Faraday can handle 
 an acid jar, and can control it at will. What- 
 ever the particles of the resurrected body may be, 
 Paul says it is going to be changed so as to 
 become a spiritual body." It will be recast like 
 the silver of the cup. 
 
 The chief of the apostles says that the Lord 
 " shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, 
 that it may be conformed to the body of his 
 glory." That which is laid away in the grave 
 is not to be wholly and irrevocably lost in nature, 
 
 [61] 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 but cut of the state of humiliation is to spring 
 the glorified body, just as (such is the apostle's 
 illustration) the beautiful wheat grows from the 
 decomposed seed. Out of the old will come the 
 new on the principle of like producing like. Each 
 seed, we are taught, has a " body of its own." 
 The wheat blade does not come from deposited 
 rye or barley or any seed except its own. Nor 
 will the resurrection body form out of any other 
 material whatever, it will in every case rise out of 
 one's own dust. " It is sown in corruption, it 
 is raised in incorruption." 
 
 When, then, the saints are raised, they are to 
 have their own proper bodies. If they should be 
 formed anew, out and out, if they should have 
 altogether different bodies, how could friends 
 recognize one another in heaven? That there 
 will be mutual recognition in the better country 
 is not only felt by all, but it is implied in Holy 
 Writ. The Saviour suggests the blessedness 
 of sitting down with Abraham and Isaac and 
 Jacob in the upper kingdom, and David antici- 
 pated a glad reunion with a loved child taken 
 away by death : " I shall go to him, but he shall 
 not return to me." So that we shall know our 
 friends and dear ones. But how can this be 
 except from the old familiar looks? And what 
 more natural than to suppose that the former 
 appearance will be retained, because the new has 
 originated in the old ? Up there every one is to 
 have his " own body." 
 
 [62] 
 
The Resurrection of the Body 
 
 But that cannot be, it is objected, for the 
 present material form crumbles to dust, passes 
 into gases, and becomes a part of nature. That 
 makes no difference, for the seed does the same, 
 and its decay is even necessary to life. " That 
 which thou thyself so west," says the inspired 
 record, " is not quickened, except it die." The 
 way in which grain germinates would seem im- 
 possible, if we were not familiar with the phe- 
 nomenon. See how strange the process is! A 
 plain, little kernel is covered with earth, and in 
 its hidden receptacle it dies, but up from its dust 
 shoots a nice green blade, which develops into 
 a strong stalk whose head bends with the weight 
 of solid grain. The Lord himself saw in this a 
 type of the resurrection, as he said, " Except a 
 grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it 
 abideth by itself alone; but if it die, it beareth 
 much fruit." Is not this just as incredible as the 
 rising of life out of human dust? 
 
 But human dust, it is said, is scattered far 
 and wide. There will occur to the mind the case 
 of Wyclif, how his body after a burial of forty- 
 four years was disinterred and burned, while the 
 ashes were flung into the Swift, the stream flow- 
 ing through Lutterworth. Then, says Thomas 
 Fuller the old historian, " this brook did con- 
 vey his ashes into Avon, Avon into Severn, 
 Severn into the narrow sea, and this into the 
 wide ocean." The dust thus distributed round 
 the globe would seem impossible of recovery for 
 
 [6 3 ] 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 any resurrection body. This may be true, but 
 worth noting is the fact that our present physical 
 organism is composed of elements gathered from 
 everywhere. We have served on our tables for 
 the purpose the blueberries of Maine, the apples 
 of Oregon, the grapefruit of Florida, and the 
 raisins and prunes of California. We extend the 
 range, as we get our nuts from Brazil in South 
 America, our coffee from the island of Java, our 
 spices from Ceylon, our oranges from Jaffa in 
 Palestine, our figs from Smyrna in Asia Minor, 
 our " Turkish delight " from Constantinople, our 
 honey from Hymettus in Greece, our rice from 
 China, and our tea from Japan. From such 
 diversified sources are the component parts of 
 the present body assembled. For the more glori- 
 ous body of the future it would seem as if the 
 Omnipotent and the Omniscient might be able 
 to do what modern commerce so easily accom- 
 plishes for us now. The incredibility of it all, 
 however, may still further appear in that the 
 human particles go to make up vegetation, tint- 
 ing the flowers and enriching the grain and giv- 
 ing freshness to the foliage. They may become 
 parts of birds and beasts, and may even enter 
 into the composition of other people. Thus two 
 bodies dying at different times might conceivably 
 have more or less of the same particles. There 
 is here an obstacle to faitH in the manner of body 
 Which we are to have? being precisely that which 
 serves us at present. Nor is this absolute iden- 
 
 [64] 
 
The Resurrection of the Body 
 
 tity necessary to the conception of the kind of 
 resurrection which we are maintaining. 
 
 We are logically led from our first point, that 
 the resurrection body will be substantially the 
 same as the present, in that it will be an out- 
 growth therefrom, to the second point, that while 
 the same it yet will be very different. There will 
 be the difference that exists between plant and 
 seed. In nature, as the apostle says, " thou sow- 
 est not the body that shall be, but a bare grain." 
 Bare kernels become the waving, golden grain. 
 There is quite a difference between a plain seed 
 and the blossom which comes therefrom. Even 
 so our bodies of humiliation are to- blossom into 
 others of divine beauty. Out of the mortal will 
 come the immortal, out of the material the im- 
 material, out of the natural the spiritual. 
 
 Is not such a resurrection, so great a change, 
 equivalent to a new creation? No, it is still 
 wheat which comes from the wheat seed. The 
 new kernel is not created, but it grows from the 
 old. The flower, too, comes from its own kind, 
 the rose from a rose, the lily from a lily, the 
 geranium from a geranium. In like manner the 
 new body will rise from its own appropriate 
 germ. It need not have the precise particles of 
 the present organism. Atomically it may be 
 wholly different. But that makes it another body, 
 does it not? No, so long as it is an outgrowth 
 from the old, it is substantially the same. 
 
 Physiologists state that we do not have a 
 
 [6 5 ] 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 single bodily element which we had a few years 
 ago. The whole material frame changes in the 
 course of a certain period, and yet we have not 
 had a new body created. We are physically the 
 same to all intents and purposes as before the 
 bodily transformation. We have the same out- 
 ward appearance, our acquaintances recognize us 
 by the old looks. And yet we are totally differ- 
 ent, not an atom of our former body remaining, 
 it having passed into other forms of existence. 
 Lotze compares the body, always changing yet 
 ever the same, to " a ripple around a submerged 
 stone." The watery atoms are in a constant flux, 
 but the ripple forever remains; like Tennyson's 
 brook, it " goes on forever," around that which 
 gives it form. 
 
 Then let one's dust be scattered, for it is not 
 the material particles which constitute the same- 
 ness. The body may even be blown to atoms by 
 an exploding shell in time of war, but we readily 
 see how it may have a worthy successor, with no 
 absolute break in continuity, any more than there 
 is in the seed that is dissolved in order to the new 
 embodiment that follows and that yet is some- 
 how mysteriously related to what was commit- 
 ted to the ground. There can be a vital, mold- 
 ing principle, which need not be lost. There 
 seems to be in every body a germ, or something, 
 which keeps it essentially the same amid the 
 greatest changes. This germinant principle is 
 not lost during sleep, and may it not be retained 
 
 [66] 
 
The Resurrection of the Body 
 
 during the sleep of death? It operates in the 
 daily changes which this mortal flesh is undergo- 
 ing, and may it not be operative during the last 
 great change? We know that this body which 
 we now have soon will be no more, but we cher- 
 ish it though it does pass away, for there is in it 
 a hidden something which forms a new body. 
 
 We, therefore, lay away our dear ones with 
 hope. Those remains of themselves may be 
 worthless, but they are precious for what they 
 are somehow to bring forth, and hence we lov- 
 ingly visit the graves of our departed. We never 
 want to disassociate entirely the buried body from 
 the personality which is to be. Tertullian, re- 
 moved only a century from the apostolic age, 
 expressed a treasured truth, when he spoke of a 
 ship-owner having a vessel, which has done long 
 service amid tempest and wind, fitted up anew, 
 to float henceforth for his pleasure, though no 
 longer put to the former hard use. He has her 
 repaired, reconstructed throughout, and retired 
 with honor. The old Latin and Christian writer 
 fondly pictures the ship, " after being shattered 
 with the storm and broken by decay," thoroughly 
 " restored, gallantly riding on the wave in all the 
 beauty of a renewed fabric! " 
 
 We are reminded of the popular indignation 
 against the dismantling of the United States 
 frigate Constitution. Built at Boston in 1797, 
 when the War of 1812 came, she led a British 
 fleet of five ships a great chase, and she after- 
 
 [67] 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 ward engaged one of them separately, captured 
 her and burned her to the water's edge. Subse- 
 quently she compelled another frigate of the foe 
 to surrender, and still later she fought with equal 
 success two other warships. With such feats 
 of seamanship rarely if ever surpassed, it did 
 seem a shame when in 1830 the secretary of the 
 navy proposed to break her up and sell her for 
 scraps of metal. Naturally the entire nation 
 flamed up in patriotic protest, which found 
 expression in the appeal of Oliver Wendell 
 Holmes for "Old Ironsides." The poet burned 
 with righteous wrath, when it was intended that 
 
 The harpies of the shore shall pluck 
 The eagle of the sea! 
 
 His ringing lines still stir our blood : 
 
 O better that her shattered hulk 
 
 Should sink beneath the wave; 
 Her thunders shook the mighty deep, 
 
 And there should be her grave; 
 Nail to the mast her holy flag, 
 
 Set every threadbare sail, 
 And give her to the god of storms, 
 
 The lightning and the gale! 
 
 Of course, that secured her preservation, and 
 the whole country applauded. When again in 
 President Roosevelt's administration, another 
 secretary of the navy suggested the making of 
 her a target, and thus ending her existence, a 
 
 [68] 
 
The Resurrection of the Body 
 
 storm of public opposition saved her a second 
 time, and she still floats at the dock in Charles- 
 town, as Nelson's flagship, The Victory, still 
 rides the water at Portsmouth, England. We 
 can even imagine our " fighting frigate " by oft 
 repairs losing time and again beam and timber 
 and iron, till perhaps nothing of her original self 
 remained, but she would still be " Old Ironsides/' 
 she would preserve her identity, though the final 
 change in her might be total. Let her be repaired 
 whenever necessary, and let her as reconstructed 
 be ever tenderly cherished, for this accords with 
 the eternal fitness of things. 
 
 Now the craft of the human body has borne 
 the militant spirit too long on life's tempestuous 
 ocean, the former has served the latter too well, 
 to be utterly dismantled and cast out as " rubbish 
 to the void." Let there be a restoration which 
 shall make the future for it as glorious as splen- 
 did service in the past would seem to justify. 
 Let there be suitable triumph in the everlasting 
 survival of the bodily mechanism, which is so 
 much more wonderful than anything ever put to- 
 gether by the mechanical genius of human skill. 
 Let there be a triumphant rising- from the dead, 
 for nothing else can satisfy our idea of the vic- 
 tory that there should be, and that there is to be. 
 
 The great stumbling-block to a resurrection 
 like that for which we are pleading is removed, 
 when we are assured by the inspired Paul, that 
 this precise body, atom for atom, is not to rise. 
 
 [69 j 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 If absolute identity is to be insisted upon, one 
 might properly inquire Which exact body is to be 
 raised, that which we had at twenty years of 
 age, or at twenty-seven, or at thirty-four, or 
 which of the ten to fifteen bodies possible to a 
 long life? But nothing of the sort is taught in 
 the Bible. Origen, that early and acute Chris- 
 tian Father, suggested approvingly, " every bod- 
 ily substance will be so pure and refined as to 
 be like ether, and of a celestial purity and clear- 
 ness." He was practically correct, for, on the 
 authority of the Epistle to the Corinthians, the 
 heavenly body is to transcend the earthly, as one 
 star surpasses another in glory, as a sun outshines 
 an asteroid. There will be fitness to surroundings, 
 the terrestrial for earth and the celestial for 
 heaven, the natural for the present and the spir- 
 itual for the future. 
 
 We, however, shall have real bodies, and faces 
 will light up in the same old way. There will 
 be the indescribable air of the past, only more 
 winsome; the former intonation of voice, except 
 that there will be the accents of heaven ; the for- 
 mer smile, but far more radiant. Personality 
 will be retained, but imperfections will be elimi- 
 nated. As God in the processes of nature 
 changes the black charcoal or carbon into the 
 flashing diamond, so will he change the human 
 body into something more divinely fair. The 
 cumbrous load of clay will be transfigured into a 
 spiritual body, which can ascend through the air 
 
 [703 
 
The Resurrection of the Body 
 
 and toward the sky, as easily as did the Lord's 
 own glorious and glorified body, which Raphael 
 in his matchless painting makes to float so lightly 
 in the atmosphere. "As we have borne the image 
 of the earthly, we shall also bear the image of 
 the heavenly." 
 
 An article once in a Boston periodical by a 
 president of the Los Angeles Astronomical Soci- 
 ety contained an illuminating illustration in this 
 connection. There was a shallow pool of water, 
 in which multitudes of small insects were swim- 
 ming round and round, enjoying their limited 
 and ephemeral life all unconscious of its brevity 
 and of anything more abiding. Every once in a 
 while one of them seemed to emerge from among 
 the rest, coming to the surface. It apparently 
 had on its sides slight enlargements, which on 
 being exposed for a little to the sunlight became 
 wings, by which it mounted into the air, and had 
 the larger freedom of the whole upper atmos- 
 phere in a world of brightness and beauty, of 
 fragrance and flowers. We can imagine its fel- 
 lows, confined to the contracted and undesirable 
 pool, sorrowing for its untimely taking off, not 
 realizing that departure for it was far better, in 
 that it had risen to a higher sphere, and was re- 
 joicing in much more genial and attractive sur- 
 roundings. Man in his seeming decease ascends 
 from mortality to immortality, from the restricted 
 pool to the expansive sky. He leaves his "muddy 
 vestment of decay," and is mysteriously trans- 
 
 [71] 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 formed into a being with wings, with superior 
 endowments, to be henceforth in a far preferable 
 environment He soars away to a larger liberty, 
 and into a heaven of transcendent light and sur- 
 passing splendor. The redeemed soul that is re- 
 leased from the terrestrial, though mourned 
 down here below, is basking in the sunshine of a 
 far lovelier world than this earth, even of the 
 promised "better country," infinitely better, in 
 that it is fairest Paradise, the celestial Eden. 
 
 [72] 
 
THE BEARING OF EVOLUTION ON 
 THE RESURRECTION HOPE 
 
THE BEARING OF EVOLUTION ON 
 THE RESURRECTION HOPE 
 
 Advanced thinkers have considered the bear- 
 ing of evolution on the resurrection hope. From 
 the new view-point they have endeavored to an- 
 swer Job's question of perennial interest, "If a 
 man die, shall he live again?" 
 
 First, with all the light that science has re- 
 cently thrown upon the subject, Is man to live 
 again in spirit? Relegating to the background 
 for the present the body, Is the soul to survive ? 
 Saying nothing for the time being about a resur- 
 rection, Is immortality to be a fact ? On the dis- 
 integration of the physical organism, the spirit 
 seems to depart like a puff of air, like a vanish- 
 ing breath, like smoke disappearing in the atmos- 
 phere. Are not the bodily and the mental or 
 spiritual inseparable? When the evolutionary 
 idea first began to exercise its sway in human 
 thought, the materialist could say very plausibly, 
 "After the nervous system has been resolved into 
 its elements, what reason have we to suppose that 
 consciousness survives, any more than that the 
 wetness of water should survive its separation 
 into oxygen and hydrogen ? " Another way of 
 stating this view is as follows : " Conscious men- 
 
 [75] 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 tal phenomena are products of the organic tissues 
 with which they are associated." 
 
 Though the first superficial conclusions were 
 more or less materialistic, a deeper view even of 
 evolution has made for the reign of God, and for 
 the emergence of the immortal from the mortal. 
 When nature worked for ages and by slow proc- 
 esses to produce the eye, it was certain that when 
 sight was developed from sensitive matter, there 
 would be something to look at. There would 
 be meadow and forest, there would be lake 
 and river, there would be sea and sky, there 
 would be all that is beautiful and satisfying 
 to the vision. When the ear was gradually de- 
 veloped, when that wondrous piece of mechanism 
 was evolved after whole millenniums, there was 
 sure to be sound to answer to the slow creation. 
 There would be the thunder of the cataract, there 
 would be the music of the bird; there would be 
 the blast and roar of the storm, and there would 
 be the whisper of the zephyr; there would be the 
 prima donna's trill, and there would be the sub- 
 lime symphony; there would be the silvery notes 
 of the piano, and the deep roll of the organ ; there 
 would be all that is pleasing to the auricular 
 nerves attuned by the hand of Jehovah through 
 geologic ages. That is to say, God has some- 
 thing to answer to every physical creation of his. 
 
 Now he has endowed man not only with bod- 
 ily functions, but also* with mental and spiritual 
 aptitudes. If evolution be true, " the ascent of 
 
 [76] 
 
The Bearing of Evolution on the Resurrection 
 
 man " both intellectually and morally has been 
 through bewildering cycles of time. Science has 
 no more axiomatic truth than the persistence of 
 force that is merely physical, and shall force of 
 character alone perish? Knowledge, feeling, 
 will; thought, affection, purpose; these surely 
 have not been laboriously developed only to> be 
 less enduring than the material. As another has 
 pertinently asked, " Must atoms endure, While 
 spirits decay? " 
 
 Particularly does this apply to the distinctively 
 religious faculties, that were the highest develop- 
 ment of God's human creation. From our first 
 acquaintance with primitive man he has had a 
 belief in a hereafter, and this conviction has 
 strengthened as he has advanced. The more 
 highly he is developed, the more keenly does he 
 feel that he could not have been brought to the 
 culmination of his being only to be resolved into 
 nothingness. There must be some answering 
 reality to his instinct for immortality. John 
 Fiske, the most brilliant evolutionist of America, 
 worked " through nature to God/' and a fitting 
 sequel to his " everlasing reality of religion " was 
 his " Life Everlasting," published after his death, 
 the crowning work of his numerous literary pro- 
 ductions. He insisted that there must be some- 
 thing to correspond to man's longing for a future 
 life, or there would be a break in nature, for 
 every other work of God — the eye, for instance, 
 and the ear — does have an answering reality. 
 
 [77] 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 Hence the force of what Newman Smyth says 
 in his " Through Science to Faith," comprising 
 his Lowell lectures : " What life begins to need, 
 to feel from within that it must find, shall eventu- 
 ally be supplied from without." 
 
 If there is anything to the scientific " survival 
 of the fittest," we can confidently expect the 
 higher soul to survive the lower body. Other- 
 wise God is not good, and there is nothing of 
 Drummond's altruism in nature, such that he 
 maintained that evolution when understood was 
 a " genuine love story." Creation has indeed 
 groaned and travailed in pain, as the apostle 
 Paul said, but the final outcome of the struggle 
 in the main has been beneficent. 
 
 Not that there has always been progress in 
 every detail, for there is sometimes a reversion 
 to the original type, and there has even been the 
 extinction of specific species, A perversion of 
 being may equally result in individual deteriora- 
 tion, and in a degeneration that finally involves 
 the loss of a soul. But if there is harmony with 
 God's laws, natural and spiritual, the movement 
 of the whole is ever upward. Tennyson accord- 
 ingly believed in immortality, to quote his own 
 words, 
 
 Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw 
 With ravine, shriek'd against his creed. 
 
 Even before the trend of modern views was seen 
 by most to be in accordance with the scriptural 
 
 [78] 
 
The Bearing of Evolution on the Resurrection 
 
 working together of all things for good, he could 
 say that they 
 
 Move upward, working out the beast, 
 And let the ape and tiger die. 
 
 Now the question is, Is the finished product to 
 be all at once cast aside? Is man, God's best 
 work, to be relegated to nothingness? Doctor 
 Munger with his usual force has said, " Does he 
 stand for a moment on the summit, exulting in 
 his emergence from nature, only to fall back into 
 the dust at its base?" In an eloquent passage 
 Dr. George A. Gordon in summing up this argu- 
 ment has said : " Man is nature's highest product, 
 and he is a product of inconceivable cost. Toward 
 him Nature has been looking forward from a 
 past indefinitely remote. When she was con- 
 cerned chiefly with the dance of atoms, with the 
 play of the primitive fire-mist, she had the 
 thought of him in her great heart ; when she was 
 elaborating worlds, setting the solar order on 
 high, forming this planet of ours and preparing 
 it for life, man was still her darling idea, and 
 in the vast procession of life from the barely to 
 the highly organized, he was never for one mo- 
 ment out of sight The evolution, running 
 through countless ages, in innumerable forms, 
 at a cost of energy and suffering inconceivably 
 great, was all the while aspiring to manhood. 
 The whole creation groaned and travailed in 
 pain until the manifestation of the sons of God. 
 
 [79] 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 Man is Nature's last and costliest work. The 
 flower of being is intelligence and love. . . Can 
 it be that this last and finest product of Nature, 
 this result of intelligence and love aimed at from 
 the beginning and reached at a cost immeasur- 
 able, shall not be conserved in growing beauty 
 and power forever? Physical evolution finds its 
 goal in man, and the process that hereupon be- 
 gins finds its end in the complete realization of 
 his ethical and spiritual nature." Such is the 
 magnificently put argument for the Christian 
 hope. Unless the seeds of the second and only 
 real death are introduced by sin into the consti- 
 tution and heart, into the physical and moral 
 nature, there seems to be no reason to doubt the 
 ultimate realization of life eternal through Him 
 who by his own resurrection brought immortality 
 to light. 
 
 But there is not only the truth of immortality, 
 there is also that of the resurrection, to be viewed 
 from the new standpoint. To the question, " If 
 a man die, shall he live again?-" the evolution- 
 ary answer is, Yes, not only in spirit, but also in 
 body. There is a natural yearning to live again 
 in the entirety of our being, physical as well as 
 psychical. There is a universal shrinking from 
 the ghost world of Homer. We all pity the 
 blind bard's disembodied spirits, his spectral 
 shadows. When Odysseus is made to visit 
 Hades, and when he meets his mother and pro- 
 ceeds to embrace her, she is so unsubstantial 
 
 [80] 
 
The Bearing of Evolution on the Resurrection 
 
 that he says, " Three times out of my arms like 
 a shadow or dream she flitted, and the sharp 
 pain about my heart grew only more." Like the 
 English poet we long for " the touch of a van- 
 ished hand." We want the future to be as real 
 as the present. In order to do this, bodily condi- 
 tions would seem to be essential, though with 
 great changes in this respect possible and prob- 
 able, even as now an evolution is continually 
 going on. Bishop Butler, who* died in 1752, long 
 before the full working of natural law was 
 known, said most truly in his famous " Anal- 
 ogy " : " We have already several times over lost 
 a great part, or perhaps the whole of our body, 
 according to certain common established laws 
 of nature, yet we remain the same living agents ; 
 when we shall lose as great a part, or the whole, 
 by another common established law of nature, 
 death, why may we not also remain the same? " 
 
 It was likewise this philosophical writer, who 
 dwelt with rapture on the difference between the 
 eagle in the egg and the same king of birds soar- 
 ing toward the sun. Why may there not be a 
 similar emergence of the immortal from the mor- 
 tal? We want to be more than classic shades, 
 more than Shakespeare's " gibbering spirits," 
 more than the uncanny specters of Homer's 
 Hades. 
 
 How does the evolutionary argument apply to 
 the not improbable retention of what has been 
 called " the human form divine " ? God has been 
 
 [81] 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 working for measureless eons in developing our 
 physical organism, until it is as nearly perfect as 
 anything can be. It is marvelous in its construc- 
 tion, " fearfully and wonderfully made," says 
 the Psalmist, and it is amazingly fitted to its ends. 
 Moreover, hand and eye and all the organs, 
 through the hereditary as well as through years 
 of practice, have been trained to a deftness and 
 to a precision of use that would seem miraculous, 
 were we not so familiar with the natural move- 
 ments in which grace and strength commingle. 
 The body is a no less finished product than the 
 soul. From what remote beginnings has it, ac- 
 cording to evolution, been in process of develop- 
 ment, while it has been carried forward toward 
 perfection by years of practical training. Is 
 this finished physical product to be wholly and 
 suddenly discarded because of the accident of 
 death? 
 
 Dr. Washington Gladden has well said that 
 the "sculptor never tries to conceive of anything 
 more shapely or more fair" than our "bodily 
 organism," for whose continuance he argues. 
 " It is much more reasonable to suppose," he 
 says, " that we shall have in the other life bodily 
 organisms with which our spirits will be familiar, 
 to the uses of which they are accustomed, than 
 that we shall be placed in tabernacles all new and 
 strange." The same author very pertinently 
 asks, " Is it reasonable to suppose that the Cre- 
 ator would give us these tools to use, and keep us 
 
 [82] 
 
The Bearing of Evolution on the Resurrection 
 
 using them for a lifetime, and then when we 
 have fairly gained the mastery of them would 
 take them from us and set us to work with new 
 ones?'' John Fiske, too, in his last book found 
 it difficult to imagine our " psychical activity as 
 continuing without the aid of the physical ma- 
 chinery of sensation." We, therefore, on evo- 
 lutionary grounds reach the same conclusion 
 relative to the body as to the soul, that if a man 
 die, he shall live again, and live most gloriously 
 in the whole range of his being. There is to be 
 a continuity of bodily no less than of spiritual 
 existence. Form and feature as well as spirit and 
 character are to be carried over from this into 
 the next world. There has been no finer inter- 
 preter of mysterious being than President 
 Charles Cuthbert Hall, of the Union Theological 
 Seminary in New York, and when he discusses 
 " The Redeemed Life After Death," he mentions 
 three essentials, namely, " the continuance of 
 personal identity, the progress of the soul, the 
 resurrection of the body." The last he calls 
 Christianity's "most characteristic belief," and 
 declares " that our instinctive protest against* the 
 humiliation and wreckage of the body by death 
 is a prophetic intimation of immortality." 
 
 Dr. Newman Smyth is here in accord with 
 these other up-to-date thinkers, for he has said: 
 " We may reasonably conclude that if now some 
 body, it may be as yet a rudimentary and imper- 
 fect body, has become of inestimable service to 
 
 [8 3 ] 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 mind in its happy communication with the out- 
 ward world, and in the mutual recognition of 
 friends; then some bodiliness will always be of 
 service to mind; and after this brief earth-time 
 the spirit in man may expect to receive the better 
 thing prepared for it, and to enter into some 
 future embodiment more finely organized for its 
 motion and vision in the life beyond/' The con- 
 clusion of the whole matter is that an instinct 
 of human nature cherishes both the material and 
 the spiritual elements that go to make up a loved 
 personality, saying with Browning: 
 
 But the soul is not the body, and the breath is not the flute ; 
 Both together make the music: either marred, and all is 
 mute. 
 
 [8 4 ] 
 
VI 
 A THREEFOLD RESURRECTION 
 
A THREEFOLD RESURRECTION 
 
 We are to awake, says the Psalmist, in the 
 divine likeness. We will endeavor to ascertain 
 what that likeness is to be in the light of what 
 Paul says. We used to think in this connection 
 mainly of the body, whereas that is merely part 
 of man. Of what does he consist? Of a soul 
 also, we say. A further analysis claims to have 
 discovered a third constituent in that mysterious 
 combination we call a human being. Plato made 
 a threefold division of man, and in this he has 
 been followed by other philosophers, and appar- 
 ently by Paul himself, who speaks of body, soul, 
 and spirit. 
 
 The majority of thinkers, however, identify 
 the soul and the spirit, and they probably are cor- 
 rect in maintaining that man consists simply of 
 soul and body, or of spirit and body, or of mind 
 and matter, according to the varying phraseol- 
 ogy which may be used. The scientist too seems 
 to admit only these two elements, the material 
 and the immaterial. But popularly speaking, we 
 can take the scriptural triad, and find that it cor- 
 responds loosely at least to three great lines of 
 thought. Human nature may be and very likely 
 is dual ; but if after a fashion there be a trinity 
 
 [8 7 ] 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 in individual unity, all the more shall we be in 
 accord with the divine nature, which, according 
 to the orthodox belief, is triune. God is Father, 
 Son, and Holy Spirit; he is creator, redeemer, 
 and sanctifier, and man may be quite literally 
 body, soul, and spirit. 
 
 The body would thus be the physical organiza- 
 tion, the soul would be what we more strictly 
 call mind, and the spirit would be the distinc- 
 tively religious element. We accordingly have 
 three great branches of knowledge : science, meta- 
 physics, and theology. We have material, men- 
 tal, and moral phenomena to engage the atten- 
 tion. So that we have a practical basis for 
 speaking of a threefold resurrection. The ques- 
 tion is, In what respect shall we rise again, 
 bodily, intellectually, or spiritually? We are 
 dealing with different departments of being. 
 Body, mind, and soul constitute the famous 
 " triangle" of the Young Men's Christian Asso- 
 ciation in all its activities for human welfare, and 
 rightly so, since here are ideals of boundless pos- 
 sibilities in a future that speaks of ultimate per- 
 fection. We are to awake in the likeness of the 
 Saviour, but in what particular? 
 
 First of all, as we have seen, there is to be in 
 a sense a bodily resurrection, though there has 
 been a tendency to ignore this truth, which once 
 was prominent when the subject of man's future 
 was considered. There has been a disposition 
 to say that the bodily might better not be empha- 
 
 [88] 
 
A Threefold Resurrection 
 
 sized, and yet a great philosophical instructor, 
 Mark Hopkins of Williams College fame, was 
 accustomed to begin teaching along his special 
 line with lectures on anatomy and physiology 
 (for which his early medical training had pre- 
 pared him), and then he advanced naturally and 
 logically to the mental and moral life. In pur- 
 suing such a course he was following Scripture, 
 which pronounces the body to be a temple of the 
 Holy Spirit, and which has for it an important 
 place in the hereafter. 
 
 To be sure, we read in the word, that " flesh 
 and blood cannot inherit the kingdom," indicat- 
 ing that we are to guard against any crude and 
 literalistic ideas, such as were once entertained, 
 so that the poet Young, in his " The Last Day," 
 could say: 
 
 Now charnels rattle; scattered limbs and all 
 The various bones, obsequious to the call 
 Self-moved advance ; the neck perhaps to meet 
 The distant head; the distant head the feet, 
 Dreadful to view, see through the dusky sky 
 Fragments of bodies in confusion fly. 
 
 Rejecting any such fanciful conceptions, we 
 nevertheless are to remember that the Master 
 himself speaks of " both soul and body " having 
 a part in the world to come, while Paul refers 
 to our anxious waiting for " the redemption of 
 our body." We shall simply accept the fact of the 
 power of Him who is the resurrection and the life, 
 
 [89] 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 and who, we are assured, " shall fashion anew 
 the body of our humiliation, that it may be con- 
 formed to the body of his glory." 
 
 Do we realize what this implies? Of Christ's 
 bodily glory we get some conception, when we 
 recall the transfiguration. What an effulgence 
 burst forth, irradiating all his form! An Evan- 
 gelist says, " His face did shine as the sun, and 
 his garments became white as the light." When 
 John, in the revelation with which he was fa- 
 vored, saw him, he was overcome by the vision 
 of supernal splendor, of the countenance dazzling 
 as the orb of day, and of the very hand reflecting 
 the light of seven stars. Shakespeare speaks of 
 a face like that of Jove,, and of an eye like that 
 of Mars: 
 
 A combination and a form indeed, 
 Where every god did seem to set his seal, 
 To give the world assurance of a man. 
 
 But diviner still than such a human form divine 
 will be the body like unto Christ's. 
 
 Who can even imagine the exquisite sensibili- 
 ties, with which it will be endowed ? The things 
 which God has prepared for those that love him 
 are beyond our conception. Paul was " caught 
 up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words." 
 So transporting was his experience " in the third 
 heaven," that he did not know whether he was 
 " in the body, or apart from the body." It was 
 beyond anything he had ever experienced on 
 
 [90] 
 
A Threefold Resurrection 
 
 earth. His sense of hearing had never before 
 been so absolutely regaled — " unspeakable words." 
 There may be more than we sometimes suppose 
 to the promise that deaf ears shall be unstopped. 
 At the center of the universe with God, we may 
 yet to all intents and purposes listen to the 
 " music of the spheres," of which the ancients 
 wrote as they thought of revolving worlds set in 
 crystal spheroids. 
 
 The blind Milton may have been writing fact 
 as well as poetry, when he said, 
 
 That heavenly harmony, which none can hear 
 Of human mould, with gross, unpurged ear. 
 
 The great dramatist may not have been merely 
 dreaming, when he said, 
 
 There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st, 
 But in his motion like an angel sings. 
 
 We may yet hear practically all this, hearing cer- 
 tainly more than we do now. There seems to 
 be no limit to the development of facilities for 
 hearing. We can make ourselves heard with the 
 ordinary voice by means of the telephone at a 
 distance of a thousand miles and more; we can, 
 as it were, whisper from Boston to Chicago, and 
 even to San Francisco, across whole States. How 
 boundless are the possibilities of the sense of 
 hearing in the glorified body, when God's entire 
 universe may become a vast whispering gallery, 
 
 [91] 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 wherein we can in an instant confer with a friend 
 millions of miles away, wherein the inhabitant 
 of the renewed earth possibly can whisper a 
 secret to a kindred spirit on Mars or Venus ; with 
 recent telephonic developments this does not seem 
 incredible. If we with our imperfect knowledge 
 can accomplish so much, what cannot the Om- 
 niscient effect by the skilful manipulation of his 
 own and to him well-known laws? 
 
 So, too, the vision is capable of almost indefi- 
 nite enlargement. By powerful telescopes we 
 sweep the heavens, and thousands of stars before 
 invisible delight the sight. Could our blind eyes 
 be opened, we doubtless would see What the 
 prophet's servant saw : " Behold, the mountain 
 was full of horses and chariots of fire round 
 about." Angelic hosts were seen in encircling 
 lines of protection. What shall we not be able 
 to see with the clarified vision of the glorified 
 body, clarified to the extent of microscopic and 
 telescopic perfection ! 
 
 It is needless to speak of the other senses; of 
 taste to be gratified with the twelve manner of 
 fruits on the tree of life ; of smell which shall not 
 be left unsatisfied by Him who created every 
 flower of earth, from the rose of Sharon to the 
 lily of the valley; of feeling which shall never 
 again be compelled to utter Tennyson's pathetic 
 cry, 
 
 But O for the touch o£ a vanish'd hand, 
 And the sound of a voice that is still ! 
 
 [92] 
 
A Threefold Resurrection 
 
 None of the sensibilities shall any more be disap- 
 pointed. We shall be satisfied when we awake 
 in the likeness of the Son of God, when we attain 
 unto the perfect stature of him in whom " dwell- 
 eth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily/' 
 
 We are not satisfied now with any of our 
 senses. We are continually experimenting and 
 inventing to make ourselves more easily heard, 
 and the result is telephones and audiphones and 
 acousticons. We are not content with our pow- 
 ers of vision, and we are manufacturing tele- 
 scopes of a longer and longer range, and micro- 
 scopes of a more and more minute capacity. The 
 connoisseur of the table searches the tropics for 
 something new to please the palate, but not till 
 we eat of the tree of life shall all our wants be 
 supplied. The botanist is in constant quest of 
 flowers which have hitherto wasted their sweet- 
 ness on the desert air, but only the fragrant fields 
 of Eden will entirely meet our desires and ex- 
 pectations. The minister exhorts the mourner to 
 patience in view of the clasping of hands by and 
 by, but not till the departed one is actually in the 
 embrace of love will anxious feeling rest. 
 
 Oh the blessedness of having every bodily sense 
 satisfied, senses, too, developed to the full; as 
 Paul says, "our mortal bodies quickened," in 
 sight, in hearing, in every respect, with the pos- 
 sible addition of new and more exalted endow- 
 ments to which we are strangers at present. Said 
 so conservative a theologian as Dr. Charles 
 
 [93] 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 Hodge of Princeton, " Instead of the slow and 
 wearisome means of locomotion to which we are 
 now confined, we may be able in the hereafter to 
 pass with the velocity of light or of thought itself 
 from one part of the universe to another.'' We 
 can hardly limit the capabilities of a body like 
 unto His, which could enter a room barred and 
 bolted; which could and did ascend through the 
 air into the blue sky until a fleecy cloud received 
 it out of sight. 
 
 We are, then, to be " clothed upon " with 
 something tangible, that yet is not natural but 
 spiritual, and if you please spirituelle. We are 
 not to be disembodied spirits, pale ghosts, but we 
 are to have a glorious and satisfactory embodi- 
 ment of some sort, though we may not be able 
 to say exactly what. The reality will transcend 
 our most glowing conception. 
 
 In the second place, we are to awake not only 
 physically, but mentally. Our resurrection is to 
 be in the intellectual likeness of God. " Now I 
 know in part," says Paul, " but then shall I know 
 even as also I have been known." How we crave 
 more knowledge! A peculiarity of the mind is 
 indicated by a remark which Abraham Lincoln 
 once made : " I never was contented when I got 
 an idea until I could bound it north, and bound 
 it east, and bound it south, and bound it west." 
 The intellect of man has been bounding things 
 until our knowledge is marvelous. 
 
 What colossal systems of philosophy, of the- 
 
 [94] 
 
A Threefold Resurrection 
 
 ology, of jurisprudence, have been wrought out 
 with a grasp of mind truly astonishing! Then 
 there has been evolved the world of poetry and 
 of literature in general and of music and of art, 
 through mental processes that have been superb. 
 
 How strange that in the lifting of a lid of a 
 teakettle by steam should have been discovered 
 the power which drives engines across continents, 
 and ships across oceans! How peculiar that in 
 the electricity which a kite gathers high in the 
 air should have been found the subtle force, by 
 which messages can be flashed over the earth and 
 under the sea, and by which we have our rapid 
 transit in the electric cars running so swiftly 
 hither and thither! How amazing that the fall- 
 ing of an apple should have suggested the law 
 of gravitation, by which the universe is gov- 
 erned; by which moons swing in their orbits 
 around planets, and planets around suns, and 
 suns around suns, wheel within wheel, to the far- 
 thest bounds of space! 
 
 How wonderfully inventive genius has worked 
 in devising and perfecting machinery! The 
 farmer on our western plains under a spreading 
 canopy, out of the blaze and heat of the sun, 
 rides like a king his harvester, which cuts the 
 golden grain, and threshes it, and puts it in bags, 
 doing the work of several men. Prof. Elisha 
 Gray invented the telautograph, Which enabled 
 one to transmit by wire, and with an ordinary 
 pen or pencil at a distance of a score of miles, an 
 
 [95] 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 exact facsimile of one's handwriting. Doctor 
 Nansen, in the polar regions of the " farthest 
 north," by means of the graphophone used to 
 listen to the sweet singing of his wife, though she 
 was in her distant Norwegian home. Doctor Tal- 
 mage has now for some time been in heaven, but 
 by the same ingenious device, being dead he yet 
 speaketh as Abel never did, for since his transla- 
 tion his familiar vocalizations have fallen upon my 
 own ears in a graphic and glowing tribute to the 
 Bible. Gladstone's voice also is thus yet sound- 
 ing down the corridors of time in a glorification 
 of the Sabbath because of its " blessed surcease 
 of toil." 
 
 In Paris recently were stored away cylinders 
 or records preserving the musical tones of some 
 of our great singers, to be heard again, if there 
 is no mishap, exactly one hundred years hence. 
 
 What cannot the mind accomplish, with only 
 half a chance, hemmed in though it be by finite 
 conditions! It makes microscopic examinations. 
 It watches pulpy stuff outlining itself in the lower 
 organisms, sees it tracing the spinal column, and 
 gets so far into the secrets of natural life as all 
 but to detect the primordial germ itself. That, 
 however, eludes the attention, though constantly 
 stimulating to renewed effort to lay bare the 
 first cause. 
 
 Nay, man is determined to know himself, and 
 he subjects to the closest scrutiny every part of 
 his material frame, and at every stage of growth. 
 
 [96] 
 
A Threefold Resurrection 
 
 He studies his " substance/' which, the Psalmist 
 implies, is hidden from all but God ; he studies it 
 as " made in secret, and curiously wrought in the 
 lowest parts " ; he understands it from the first 
 pulsations or throbbings or stirrings of life up 
 to the full development, until he can say with a 
 truer appreciation of the facts than David had, 
 " I am fearfully and wonderfully made." 
 
 From the microscopic he turns to the telescopic. 
 He calculates how far away starry worlds are. He 
 weighs them in the balance, and informs us how 
 many earths would be required to make the sun — 
 over 300,000, says the astronomer Young. He 
 learns about their chemical constitution, and by 
 his spectroscope with its revelation of black bands 
 he confidently affirms where iron exists at a dis- 
 tance of millions of miles. With delicate instru- 
 ments he ascertains the various ingredients of 
 which distant suns are composed by analyzing 
 light that left its sources before the creation of our 
 first parents, before the dawn of history. With 
 his photographic art he catches on sensitive 
 plates impressions of stellar orbs hitherto undis- 
 covered and undiseoverable. With the penetrat- 
 ing X-rays he reveals the very bones of the 
 human frame, so that one can now have a picture 
 of his own skeleton, the robing neither of apparel 
 nor of flesh being able to hide the inner mecha- 
 nism, and the bullet lodged in some secret place 
 being clearly seen by the operating surgeon, who 
 can thus remove it with neatness and dispatch. 
 
 [97] 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 Marconi with his wireless telegraphy sends mes- 
 sages across the ocean and brings different ships 
 hurtling over rough seas through thick fog to 
 the relief of a White Star Liner in dire distress, 
 and to the saving of her passengers from watery 
 graves, as the great floating palace, disabled and 
 helpless, finally goes to the bottom. It would 
 have been to the saving also of the Titanics 
 fifteen hundred victims, had it not been for the 
 failure of the human agent, who perfidiously 
 refused to respond to the startling S. O. S. sent 
 forth, Save, Oh, Save! Alexander Graham Bell, 
 who made the telephone possible and gave his 
 name to the whole vast system, has called atten- 
 tion to a most remarkable recent achievement of 
 wireless telegraphy and telephony. A person at 
 the station at Arlington, Virginia, talked by 
 word of mouth with a man on the Eiffel Tower 
 in Paris, and was overheard by a third party at 
 Honolulu in the mid-Pacific. The distance cov- 
 ered was about eight thousand miles, more than 
 a third of the circumference of the earth. Pro- 
 fessor Bell added that this "surely foreshadows 
 the time when we may be able to talk with a man 
 in any part of the planet by telephone and without 
 wires." 
 
 And now the air has been conquered. We can 
 fly like birds, skim the seas like gulls, and rise 
 toward the sun like eagles, reaching an altitude 
 far beyond the point of visibility to eager eyes 
 straining upward through the blue ether from 
 
 [98] 
 
A Threefold Resurrection 
 
 the earth down here below*. Aeroplanes for war- 
 fare are already a familiar sight, and for com- 
 merce are doubtless soon to become common, and 
 there shall be a fulfilment of Tennyson's poetic 
 prophecy : 
 
 Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, 
 Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly 
 
 bales ; 
 Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain'd a 
 
 ghastly dew 
 From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue. 
 
 The fastest express train of the " limited " type 
 has been able to run from New York to Chicago 
 in twenty hours, but in the new postal line about 
 to be established by the American government 
 only half that time will be required for an aero- 
 plane loaded with mail to- traverse the distance 
 between these two points. Such a stirring of the 
 upper currents almost takes our breath away, and 
 will add another to the wonders of modern ac- 
 complishment. 
 
 We not only sail through the heights of the 
 atmosphere, but we also plunge through the 
 depths of the ocean. The year 191 6 will ever be 
 memorable for a remarkable and almost miracu- 
 lous feat, when the first submarine ventured to 
 cross from Germany to America, from Bremen 
 to Baltimore, and succeeded. The Deutschland 
 will ever have a secure place in history in view of 
 her impressive accomplishment. She passed safely 
 
 [99] 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 underneath the most formidable "blockading fleet 
 known to any age. She rose and traveled serenely 
 on the surface, but at the sight of enemy ships 
 she quietly submerged. She even escaped the 
 storms that lashed the surface of the great deep. 
 She simply cuddled down into oceanic depths 
 where all was calm. As her captain said, " It 
 was just like sinking into a soft, blue nest." 
 Surely, wonders never cease. 
 
 Because of the geometrical regularity of the 
 lines astronomically observed on Mars, and be- 
 cause of their nice articulation at the junctions, 
 Prof. Percival Lowell concludes that these are 
 canals, conducting the melting snows of the polar 
 caps down over the ruddy planet, which is marked 
 by a scarcity of water, and his inference is, that 
 there is a high order of intelligent, constructive 
 life on our neighboring globe, and Professor 
 Todd of Amherst endorses this conclusion. 
 
 From atom to fixed star the human mind has 
 swept with wondrous accumulation of knowl- 
 edge. 
 
 And yet, mentally as well as physically, man 
 is still asleep. He has not come to his best by 
 any means. When he awakes he will be a giant, 
 rejoicing as a strong man to run a race. When 
 the resurrection morn dawns, his intellect will 
 first be roused to the exercise of its highest, most 
 godlike powers. He shall be satisfied, when he 
 awakes in the intellectual likeness of God. He 
 is not satisfied now. He is allured on by what 
 
 [ ioo] 
 
A Threefold Resurrection 
 
 is just beyond his mental grasp. What, for in- 
 stance, is beyond that last thing of which he can 
 conceive in boundless space? Not last either, 
 for what is next to that, and what beyond that, 
 and so on ad infinitum? And he sinks back para- 
 lyzed in effort, and he longs for the time when he 
 shall be freed from the limitations by which he 
 is now circumscribed. 
 
 Not that he has made a failure. He has done 
 nobly. He has made wide explorations, but after 
 all, like the discoverer of the laws of gravity, he 
 has only been picking up a few pebbles on the 
 beach, while the great ocean lies unexplored. He 
 has scarcely begun to find the treasures stored 
 away in the house of many mansions. He has 
 not yet had the freedom of the universe, for the 
 small temple of human knowledge, which he has 
 imperfectly explored, is as nothing in comparison 
 with that temple which expands around us to 
 infinity, "the vast temple of the world which," 
 said Professor Park of Andover, " has the stars 
 for the gilding of its roof, and mines of gold for 
 the pillars that sustain its floor, and the rose and 
 the lily and the jessamine ever renewing them- 
 selves in the carpet that blooms for us to tread 
 upon while we are walking through the temple, 
 resonant as its wide spaces are with the hymns 
 of the forest, and the eternal anthem of the waves 
 of the sea." 
 
 Verily, the house not made with hands has 
 many hidden chambers whose secrets will be dis- 
 
 [ioi] 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 closed only to that quickened intellect which 
 comes from a mental resurrection. There is to 
 be not only new sensibility of body but fresh 
 vigor of mind. There is to be a resuscitation of 
 latent faculties as well as of dormant senses. We 
 are to wake up all through our being. We shall 
 be satisfied when we awake in the likeness of God 
 intellectually, when we shall have his comprehen- 
 sion of things, when we shall know, according to 
 the promise in the word of inspiration, even as we 
 have been known. 
 
 Who does not desire a share in such a resur- 
 rection, with its increased sensibility and es- 
 pecially its enlarged mentality? Who would call 
 back to earth redeemed saints, whose opportuni- 
 ties for acquiring knowledge must infinitely 
 transcend ours, and whose intellectual pursuits 
 must be conducted under the direct and personal 
 supervision of the Omniscient himself, as forth 
 from the city whose gates are never shut they go 
 on celestial excursions among stars which cannot 
 be numbered ! " Such knowledge is too wonder- 
 ful for me" now, but it will not be when the 
 mind shall have been clothed with divine power, 
 when it shall have awaked at eternity's dawn to 
 heavenly illumination. Then and not till then 
 shall we begin to be satisfied. 
 
 Once more, the resurrection includes an awak- 
 ing in the moral likeness of God. We should not 
 be satisfied with the most exquisite sensibility, 
 nor with the highest intellectuality, unless these 
 
 [ 102] 
 
A Threefold Resurrection 
 
 were supplemented by a refined spirituality. That 
 completes the man, " spirit and soul and "body." 
 
 The body is to be transformed, but that is not 
 sufficient. The soul or mind is to be clarified, but 
 the natural man (that is, the intellectual man, 
 the soul or psychic man) may have no spiritual 
 discernment. The spirit too is therefore to be 
 purified into conformity with the holy character 
 of God. We might have a glorious body, and 
 yet be miserable. We might have a splendid in- 
 tellect, and yet be unhappy. We shall be satis- 
 fied only when the night of sin has passed away, 
 when all moral shadows have vanished, when we 
 have awaked and come into the sunlight of per- 
 fect righteousness. Conscience must be at rest, 
 giiilt must be washed away. The spot on the 
 hand of Lady Macbeth must be removed, and yet 
 for this all the waters of old ocean will not avail. 
 The blood of Jesus Christ, however, does cleanse 
 from all sin, whose stains must be effaced or there 
 can be no peace. 
 
 The source of our greatest disquietude is not 
 physical, much as we should like bodily transfor- 
 mation so that there would be no more sickness 
 and disease, no more consumption and cancer; it 
 is not mental, much as we should like intellectual 
 expansion so as to fathom more of the mysteries 
 by which we are surrounded ; but the great disturb- 
 ing force is spiritual ; we should like to get rid of 
 moral evil, so that we and ours would be forever 
 safe from its awful blight. Neither trifling imper- 
 
 [ 103] 
 
The Easter Hope 
 
 fection of body, nor slight limitation of mind, but 
 taint of character is what causes us most anxiety, 
 is what we fear most for those we love. A resur- 
 rection which will exchange this frail mortal 
 body for a glorious immortal one, which will 
 emancipate and wonderfully develop the intellect, 
 and above all which will give the spirit entire free- 
 dom from sin; that is the likeness in which we 
 shall awake when the night of physical infirmity 
 and of mental obscurity and of spiritual darkness 
 shall have ended, and the resurrection morn 
 shall have dawned. 
 
 How inexpressibly delightful will be associa- 
 tion with the beautiful and the cultivated and the 
 holy! There will be transfigured forms, per- 
 fectly radiant There will be master minds, 
 giant intellects. There will be purest, choicest 
 spirits. How on reflection can we wish back dear 
 ones who have joined that innumerable and 
 highly favored company! We should rather 
 look forward to the certainty, through the Chris- 
 tian hope that is sure and stedfast, of sharing 
 in the glorious consummation. We can under- 
 stand the triumphant feeling of the golden- 
 mouthed Chrysostom, when he said, "As when 
 men are called to some high office, multitudes 
 with praises on their lips assemble to escort them 
 at their departure to their stations, so do all with 
 abundant praise join to send forward, as to 
 greater honor, those of the pious who have de- 
 parted." We can appreciate this sentiment in 
 
 [ 104] 
 
A Threefold Resurrection 
 
 view of the future we have been portraying. We 
 should make sure of attaining unto this threefold 
 resurrection of increased sensibility to every 
 pleasure, of enlarged intellectual grasp, and of 
 unhindered spiritual fellowship with God and 
 with the spirits of the just made perfect Then 
 shall we be satisfied when we awake in the bodily, 
 the mental, and the moral likeness of our Lord 
 and Saviour Jesus Christ 
 
 It is not a correct representation which is 
 given in " The Tempest " of Shakespeare, that 
 " our little life is rounded with a sleep." There 
 is to be a glorious awaking. Human lives need 
 a future for their completing, they are not prop- 
 erly rounded out on earth. Limited to this ter- 
 restrial sphere, they are like the arch of prismatic 
 colors with the two cut-off ends resting on the 
 landscape at widely separated points, as com- 
 pared with the inspired Revelator's rainbow in 
 heaven " round about the throne," with no break 
 in the beauteous span of celestial brightness. The 
 here and the hereafter need to be joined, if there 
 are to be no half circles, Which are by no means 
 satisfying. With Longfellow's conception, how- 
 ever, we are satisfied, as with him we say : 
 
 The great design unfinished lies, 
 Our lives are incomplete. 
 
 But in the dark unknown 
 
 Perfect their circles seem, 
 Even as a bridge's arch of stone 
 
 Is rounded in the stream. 
 
 [105] 
 
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