Men heard them gladly, because they preached the resurrection; and because the truth was so purely human as well as purely Divine, it overran and mastered the world.
I. It seems to explain man’s place is the creation. Man’s position at the head of this creation places him on the threshold of a higher creation, in which the true sphere of his royalty lies. Such a world as this is too small, too poor, to be the home and the realm of his manhood; its true function is to train him for his royalty beyond. The risen man, by rising, enlarged quite infinitely the field of man’s vision, activity, interest, and hope. The risen man explained every propulsive movement and yearning in man’s nature-all his kinglike form and instinct: while the weakness, the poverty, the pain, the dread, belonged to his mortal and transitory sphere. Men heard the doctrine gladly, for they saw the true form and stature of the human in the man Christ Jesus; in the risen Christ God’s idea of humanity was for evermore unveiled.
II. It seemed to unfold the meaning of the mystery of matter-the mortal body in which the soul finds itself enshrined, or, as it is ceaselessly tempted to cry, entombed. The mystery of embodiment is the essential mystery which perplexes and bewilders the world. Men found it hard to see how there could be fair room for the flesh in any scheme of the world which should include the rule of a wise, righteous, and beneficent Lord. The gospel of Jesus and the resurrection flashes at once a flood of light on man and on his constitution. There is One, a man, “bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh,” who has borne the body through death, who took it again joyfully when death had slain its mortality, and bore it with Him to the spiritual and eternal world. The revelation of a glorified human body in the world behind the veil was the sanctification, not of the body only, but also of all material things on this side the veil; it was the sign from heaven that they were originally and essentially not of the devil, but of God. We cannot in these days measure the range of that emancipation-man freed from the tormenting thought that he bore a devilish part about with him, a body which could never be tamed to a true subjection, never trained to a Divine use.
III. It seemed to cast light on the still deeper and darker mystery of evil; it explained the meaning by unveiling the end of man’s moral discipline. It proclaimed, as nothing else that we can conceive of could proclaim, God’s mastery over all that was dark and malign in nature and in life. Thenceforth man could fight the battle in hope, and was saved. It was the flashing out of a victorious force over sin and death, which lit up the world and made it radiant with hope, when the apostles preached through Jesus the resurrection from the dead. (J. B. Brown, B. A.)
Questionings concerning the resurrection set at rest
I see the force of all this; I admit that the death and burial of a seed, while it suggests the bare possibility of man surviving that dissolution which we call death, by no means raises the presumption that it is so to the height of a proof. All we can say is that there are certain analogies for it from plant life, and other analogies against it from animal life; and who can tell which way it will ultimately turn? It is at this stage of the argument that the resurrection of Jesus Christ comes in to decide our wavering minds. Until Easter day we stand with the disciples, questioning what the resurrection of the dead should mean; but now we question no longer. In this respect we are as the contemporaries of Columbus were when he boldly set sail from Palos in August, 1492, and in less than three months set at rest the problem of ages. His return from the voyage to the Bahamas turned presumption into proof. It was no longer a question on which sides might be taken. In a sense it was now set at rest. It admitted no further argument. Those who continued obstinate, and held out for the old opinion, as some of Columbus’ contemporaries did, in spite of evidence to the contrary, could only be left to their own obstinacy. (J. B. Heard, M. A.)
