RISEN LIFE
‘If ye then he risen with Christ.’
Do not let Easter-time pass without the rolling away of some stone, the unloosing of some bar, the standing out into some light, the date of some new life in the old heart.
But how can it be?
I. There is a spring within you, a hidden force, an action of the Holy Ghost—an upward movement always at work, which, if you do not check it, will raise you. Every one has it. And its power is immense. They say that in nature the feeblest tendril has been known to spring a rock; much more in grace, the Divine Spirit within a man—how small soever—would move a mountain! Christ rose by the power that was in Himself. And we all have the secret of that ‘risen life’ within us, if only we will not thwart the rising.
II. Obey the resurrection-voices that are speaking now to your dead soul.—There are thousands of resurrection-voices in the air. Every leaf speaks resurrection. Every daybreak speaks resurrection. With a command always comes a virtue. Use the virtue, and you can obey the command, whatever it be, however else impossible. God says, ‘Rise!’ Echo it—‘Lord, I rise!’ and you will rise.
III. All by union with Christ.—When Christ rose, you were there. Mystically, you rose in Christ. That is a deep mystery. But believe it; it is true. You will rise because He rose. Your ‘risen life’ is in His ‘risen life.’ Is not this what it means, ‘Risen with Christ’?
Illustration
‘There is one of you who is always living in the grave of some fond memory. You cannot lift yourself up from the death of that departed one. Your thoughts hang, impotently and impatiently, on days that will never come back again; and you are wellnigh as buried, perhaps more buried, than those who lie in their quiet resting-places! And some of you have your whole minds entombed in some present cloud of sorrow, which gathers around and presses upon you on every side, and makes life to you as dark as a sealed sepulchre! And more still are wrapped and encumbered by a thousand little daily cares, which bind them down as effectually as if those cares were the soul’s grave-clothes! And some of you are in the trammel of the spell of some master-mind which is stronger than your own! And some of you are held by an affection which your conscience condemns! And some, by some mere fashion, or a pleasure, which you despise, which yet has woven around you its silken, but adamantine chain! And some have all spiritual energy, and real, loving religion killed by controversy. They are buried in the abstruse. Faith is lost in abstractions, and growth in mere cold doctrine! And some again never rise above their own hearts. You want resurrection, an Ephphatha! an act of Omnipotence, the grace of a resurrection.’