XI.

CHRIST ROSE THE THIRD DAY.

"That like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life."-ROM. vi. 4.

"Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into Heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down from above :) Or, Who shall descend into the deep? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead.) But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith which we preach; that if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation."-ROM. x. 6-10.

"For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures," &c.—1 Cor. xv. 3, 4.

So prominent is the fact of our Lord's resurrection in the preaching of the Apostles on the day of Pentecost and ever afterwards, as well as in some of their Epistles, that the truth of all we are taught in the New Testament concerning Christ depends on the fact of his resurrection. It is necessary to the proof of the Divinity of his person, the genuineness of his mission, the efficacy of his atonement, and the eternal life of his people. When Philip preached Jesus from Isaiah to the Ethiopian, he told him that the condition on which he might be baptized

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and saved was: "If thou believest with all thine heart." And the Ethiopian answered: "I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God." That is, he believed all that Philip had preached to him concerning the life, Messiahship, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus. That is, he preached as Paul preached, saying, “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved." And so also Paul, in his discourse in the synagogue at Antioch (Acts xiii.), boldly declares that the voices of the Prophets read every Sabbath were fulfilled in the things which the Jewish rulers and people, with the Gentiles, did unto Jesus, and that Moses, David, and all their sacred writers had foretold the sufferings and death of the Messiah, just such sufferings, and just such a death and burial and resurrection as the admitted facts of the day declared to have been accomplished in Jesus of Nazareth, and that, therefore, He was the true Messiah of God. Nothing can excel the point and power of the Apostle's argument in this case. It is precisely the argument used by Peter on the day of Pentecost.

And it may be well here to observe, that whatever disputes have been carried on about the other Articles of our Creed by the Fathers and the Schoolmen, and by the theologians of the Reformation, they have almost universally agreed about this one. Among them all, it has been recognized as the corner-stone of the Church of God, without which it would fall to the ground, "the pillar of Christianity itself." Its nature, and the consequences inevitably flowing from it, if true, are of such importance that it is an essential, fundamental Article of our holy faith. The Apostle, in 1 Cor. xv., shows conclusively, that if Christ did not rise again the third day from the dead, according to the Scriptures, then we have no

Church, no Gospel, and Christianity itself is nothing. "And our preaching is vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that He raised up Christ; whom He raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not. For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised; and if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead."

In the light of so many clear passages of Holy Scripture that assert, imply, or allude to the resurrection of Jesus, it is astonishing that any one claiming to be a Christian at all should deny it, or have any cavils about this Article of our Creed; and yet, according to the public journals, an assembly or synod of Protestant divines and laymen in Europe have passed solemn resolutions by a large majority vote, within the last few months, to the effect that we have no satisfactory and consistent account of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.* In fact, the direct and inevitable tendency of all those theological speculations that throw doubts on the inspired authority of God's Word, and do not recognize the death of Christ as an atonement or vicarious sacrifice for sin, and do not receive the doctrine of justification by faith and salvation by free grace, is to ignore or set aside the doctrine of Christ's resurrection. It is of great importance, there

*This Synod met in Nismes, France, in the summer of 1866. I refer to the proceedings as published at the time from memory, and simply as an illustration of the signs of apostasy in our day. I feel very confident that my allusion is fully supported by the published notices of the meeting. It is, however, exceedingly gratifying to know that Guizot, Pressensé, and others of like views, are making their influence felt in France in favor of the old faith of the Reformed French Church.

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fore, to find an Article of our holy faith setting forth so clearly and firmly the fact that in all ages, from the time of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, it has been most surely believed that "the third day He rose again from the dead." Such testimony from the voice of the holy apostolic universal Church is a safeguard for those who love the truth as it is in Jesus. According to the Scriptures, the Church on earth is God's witness to testify concerning the Lord Jesus, His Holy Anointed One, and is especially set forth in the world to bear witness of His resurrection from the dead. Thus, in choosing Matthias, it is said: "Wherefore of these men, which have companied with us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, must one be ordained to be a witness with us of his resurrection." And accordingly God did pre-design witnesses for this purpose-such persons as were best fitted to give the proper testimony-persons well qualified to know and state the truth, and sufficient in number to establish a fact by law. They were so well acquainted with our Lord's person before his death, and admitted to such familiar intercourse with him after his resurrection, that it is impossible for them to have been themselves deceived. Nor are we able to discover any possible motive they could have had to deceive others. And besides the many separate, distinct appearances of our Lord to different parties, at different times and under different circumstances, and for the space of forty days, we have the testimony of above five hundred eye-witnesses that He did appear alive in his human body after his resurrection, and gave them such tokens and signs of the identity of the body in which He appeared to them with the body in which He was crucified, that they did firmly believe in the reality of his resurrection; and He the more convinced them of this by continuing with them and speaking to them many things concerning the king

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dom of God. And as we do not see how it was possible for so many eye-witnesses to be deceived, or to desire to deceive others, so we are not able to conceive how it was possible for them to have succeeded in deceiving themselves or the world in such a matter of fact as this, if they had been wicked and reckless enough to have tried to do so.

In the two Discourses already delivered on the fifth Article of our Creed, it was my object to show in what sense our Lord descended into hell, and that whatever Gehenna or Purgatory may or may not be, our Creed knows nothing of them. As I am now travelling on the line of the Apostles' Creed, I do not wish to be turned aside to other discussions, however important they may be. The other clause of the fifth Article is: "The third day He roseagain from the dead." This is a distinct, positive proposition, and I propose, with God's assistance, the following method: namely,

FIRST. A brief history of the Article, and some exposition of its main particulars. And the

SECOND Discourse, for next Sabbath evening, if the Lord be pleased to grant us his blessing, will be a brief historical demonstration of the truth of our Lord's resurrection.

I. HISTORICALLY, we find this Article in all the ancient creeds just as it stands in the Apostles' Creed, coming after our Lord's burial or descent into hell, and followed by his ascension, sitting at the right hand of the Father Almighty, and coming to judgment. There are no essential variations in its wording-no variations at all except as to some small matters of mere taste as to the use or omission of "again," or "from the dead," some consid