POWER THROUGH CHRIST
‘Because I live, ye shall live also.’
This was the word of comfort in the ears of the disciples, and the new and added sense and joy in a certainty of personality beyond the grave strengthened their wills, purified their characters, and uplifted them with a sense of wonderful dignity.
I. The graciousness of the truth—that is, if we are in Christ, though death come and the dust fall upon our coffins, we shall be more powerfully alive to help our friends who remain on earth—is one that is as stimulating to Christ-likeness and Christ-livingness as it is of cheer to those we leave behind us.
II. The personality of the risen Christ is guarantee of the living power of men who are His friends, to help their brethren here on earth, even after they have passed to the world of spirit beyond. The joy of the Resurrection morning is for us the joy of knowing that whatever in us men and women is of Christ shall not cease as an operative principle here on earth when we cease to live and move and serve the present hour, but shall still run on to the making of our earth fit for the coming of the Kingdom. The sting of death is not only sin, but it is fear lest all we hoped and toiled for have an end. But in the light of Easter morning we know that whatever is of Christ in our hope and toil shall live on, and help the coming of the better time which Christ spoke of as the Kingdom of God.
III. The aim and end of the risen Christ is the communication of vitality, contagion of personality, transmission of character. And we who would help forward that social idea which Jesus had before His eyes, and which He always spoke of as the Kingdom of God, must in this matter put on the mind of Christ, must pray to be in such living union with the Christ Whom we strive to follow that we may become sensible that His will is being done in or through us, as individual members of His body, for the helping of our time—His will Who said, ‘Because I live, ye shall live also.’
—Canon Rawnsley.
Illustration
‘What is to save the great industrial revolution that is going forward from pure materialism and ignoble and irreligious selfishness but the bringing back into the Labour movement and into the Socialist programme the personal Christ as Saviour of all our national society? We have, as Maurice once put it, either to Christianise Socialism or Socialise Christianity. It can, I believe, only be done by bringing back, not only the ethics of Christ, but His personality and the power of it into the problems that are ahead of us. We must preach and teach that the spirit work of Jesus Christ, our risen Lord, is “to set forth the principle of personality, to awaken the higher life of persons, to make a man come to himself,” that so we may arise and go unto the Father and the Kingdom of that Father in the wealth and health of individual character.’