The Impossible Consequence of a Denied Future

“But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen.”

“If there be no immortality Christ is dead — the purest, the fairest, the loveliest life that ever breathed has become less than the napkin, less than the grave-clothes, less than the sepulchre.” It is to Paul an impossible consequence. He cannot think of Christ as dead. He says “If Christ be dead, death must be a delusion.” Did you never feel this experience? You parted with a friend an hour ago, and the next hour you heard that he was dead; you said “impossible!” And when it was confirmed, you said again “impossible! If he be dead, then death is not to die. I must have misnamed it, misread it, mistaken the inscription on its doorway. Death henceforth is a gate of life to me.”

Son of Man, whenever I doubt of life, I think of Thee. Nothing is so impossible as that Thou shouldst be dead. I can imagine the hills to dissolve in vapour, and the stars to melt in smoke, and the rivers to empty themselves in sheer exhaustion; but I feel no limit in Thee. Thou never growest old to me. Last century is old, last year is old, last season is an obsolete fashion; but Thou art not obsolete. Thou art abreast of all the centuries, nay, Thou goest before them like the star. I have never come up with Thee, modern as I am. Thy picture is at home in every land. A thousand have fallen at its side, but it has kept its bloom; old Jerusalem, old Rome, new Borne- — it has been young amid them all. Therefore, when oppressed by the sight of death, I shall turn to Thee. I shall see my immortality in Thee. I shall read the possibilities of my soul in Thee. I shall measure the promise of my manhood by Thee. I shall comfort myself by the impossible conclusion “If there be no immortality, Christ is dead.”