Immortality.
I. Christ hath revealed the fact of immortality. Not that it was utterly unknown before. The Psalms contain it and other passages of the Old Testament; and partly the outgrowth of instincts deep buried in the hearts of men, and partly the results of early and ill-remembered revelations, even those who had not the Bible, for the most part expected a life beyond the grave. But Christ and the Christian revelation have made an end of the matter. And Christ Himself laid down His life, and continued under the power of death for a time; but again He took up the life which He had so freely laid down, and now that He is risen and become the firstfruits of them that sleep we have in Him a specimen of the resurrection, and a guarantee of His people's immortality.
II. The Gospel has shed all the light we have on the nature of the life beyond, the mode or manner of immortality. On some points it says little or nothing, but all that we do know is announced, or by fair induction inferred, from the Gospels, from the Book of Revelation, from the Epistles to Thessalonica and Corinth.
III. The Gospel has not only brought immortality to light, but has revealed the means of reaching it. Christ might have come from the Father's house, and gone back to it, and yet might have been the only one from this world who did so; for He is the only one who has been here who has the intrinsic right and power to go thither. But to His friends He has extended His own right, and their immortality He has identified with His own. "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life "; and if you know the Lord Jesus rightly; if through Him, the Way, you have come to a reconciled God; and if through Him, the Truth, God's quickening Spirit has come into your soul, you will possess life so plenteously as not to dread the second death; you will be able to look calmly at the grave, and all intervening incidents, strong in the strength of conscious immortality.
J. Hamilton, Works,vol. vi., p. 365.
References: 2 Timothy 1:10. T. Reed, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. xvi.,p. 365; J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,vol. x., p. 92; S. A. Tipple, Echoes of Spoken Words,p. 177; A. K. H. B., Graver Thoughts of a Country Parson,3rd series, p. 230; E. Bersier, Sermons,1st series, p. 181; Good Words,vol. vi., p. 722; T. M. Herbert, Sketches of Sermons,p. 184; Homilist,3rd series, vol. vii., p. 266; J. B. Paton, Christian World Pulpit,vol. vii., p. 52; W. Brock, Ibid,vol. viii., p. 328; J. B. Brown, Ibid.,vol. xii., p. 305; E. Johnson, Ibid.,vol. xiv., p. 200; Bishop Westcott, Ibid.,vol. xxxv., p. 310; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. vi., p. 220.