The Argument from the Heart
“If Christ be not raised, then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.”
“If the highest life be extinguished, what is become of your dead?” It is to me the most unique passage in the Bible. It is the one instance in which the argument for future life is built on the affections of the heart alone. I find it elsewhere on other foundations. I find it built on the life of God. I see it constructed on the needs of conscience. I meet it reared on the ladder of aspiration. But I would have missed something if the words had been unspoken — “If the highest life be extinguished, what is become of your dead?” It would have been the lost chord in the organ of sacred sympathy — the one unappropriated spot in the field where God touches man. I am glad that the chord has not been lost. I am glad that from the sympathetic touch of my God the green spot in my heart 66 8EAUGHING8 IN THE SILEXGE.
is not omitted. I am glad that, amid the many demands for my future, He allowed one place to the cry of my love — cc If Christ be not raised, they also that are fallen asleep have perished.”
My soul, be not forgetful of thy human love. It has its message for eternity. Thy Father has an argument addressed to thy heart alone — “If the highest life be extinguished, what is become of your dead? He calls thee to Heaven with earthly music; He appeals to the interest of thy human love. Would He point thee to that which He knew to be a shadow? Would He incite thee to lament the loss of thy earthly love, if He knew this love to be itself not worth preserving? Why callest thou it earthly? Are there two kinds of love? Is the water in the bay diverse from the water of the sea? Is it not only the sea imprisoned? Thy heart is but thy Father’s love imprisoned — thy Father’s love circumscribed by rocks and shallows. It has been shut in by the cliffs of time, and its voice has been reduced to a murmur. Yet even its murmur has the music of the everlasting main, and even its broken strength is mightier than the strength of man. Earth has not made it; earth has un-m&Ae it, narrowed it. Why should not the loss of earth restore it? Why should not death break the embankment and let love go free? Why should not the murmur rise again into the ocean’s tone? Why should not the liberated heart say to the parent sea “I and my Father are one “? Love itself must be dead, if the love of man should perish.