Liveth

Revelation i. 18.

f IFE is triumphant! That is the glad witness of the New Testament, and especially of the Apocalypse. It was a revelation indeed to the world, on which it broke, as tidings of great joy. Up to that moment, the majority of men, including some of the foremost of the race, had thought that death, and night, and chaos, would end all.

And some of the conceptions of the ancient world embody this sad foreboding for all time — the

Prometheus, in which man struggles heroically but hopelessly, whilst the eagle of irresistible destiny feeds upon his vitals; or the Laocoon, in which “%fvetb”

man, in his sinewy strength is involved with slender youth, in the coils of the serpents of fate, against which they struggle in vain. Children were born to die. Flowers bloomed to fade. The glory of the spring smiled but for a transient hour, amid the marble of their temples and beside the deep azure of their ocean waves. All things at last seemed doomed to be overcome by the dark elements, which waged perpetual war against life, and beauty, and joy.

Into the midst of such a world the tidings came that Life was the mightier force; and that Life was victor.

And when men asked the reason for. an assertion so confident and so glad, the answer was given in some such terms as these: — “There lived in Palestine One, who, during His brief life, was the assailant of death in all its varied forms. He beat back, by His touch and word, its approach. He

Zbc Wctoj* compelled it to lay down the young life which it had only just taken up. He brought from the grave those who had long passed from the bourne of the living world. And yet, though He might have seemed impervious to death, at last He too succumbed to its power; and the brightest hopes that had ever been born in human hearts seemed destined to hopeless destruction. But it was only for an instant. Three days were long enough to show that He could not be holden by death. He broke from its prison-house, and came forth victor over its supremest efforts. He made Himself known to His friends as the Living One; speaking and talking to them as of old. And to the purged eye of him whom He loved He gave one last glorious vision of Himself in the sea-girt isle of Patmos, saying, as He did so: “Fear not; I am the first and the last, and the living one; and I was “fcivetb.”

dead, and behold I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades.” (Rev. i. 18, R. V.)

This was the keynote of the gladness of the early Church: “We know that our Redeemer liveth.” And as the centuries have slowly rolled away, they have not been able to rob the Church of her faith. Year after year she has celebrated Easter with songs. And in the darkest time she has saluted the living Saviour with the words: “When Thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death, Thou didst open the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers.”

Who can fathom all the consolation which we enjoy, and which is due to the fact that our Lord Jesus is living in an eternal present, never more to see corruption?

He lives as our High Priest. There was a fatal defect in the Jewish priesthood, because they were not able to continue, by reason of death. As soon as a High Priest became thoroughly versed in his duties, and familiar with his charge, he had to follow the steps of his great predecessor, who died on the summit of Mount Hor. But this Man, because He continueth ever, hath an unchangeable Priesthood. “Wherefore also He is able to save to the uttermost them that draw near unto God through Him, seeing He ever liveth.” What music is in those words! When we come to God, it is by a living way. Nor should we be content to leave our morning or evening prayer, till we have had living contact with the Living One Himself. Prayer may be a law; but it is equally a direct converse with a real living personal friend — the Prince who is our Brother — the King who is of near kin to us. And this is surely the happy experience of the Blessed Life. To know that there is no cloud between Him and the soul; and to repeat again and “Xivetb.”

again vows of loyalty and devotion, spoken not into the responseless air, but into the living ear of One whose heart responds in unutterable tenderness to the stillest whisper of affection and trust.

He lives as the Source of our Life. “Because I live, ye shall live also.” This teaching was borrowed f#om His own deep inner life. His life, in a very significant sense, was not His own; it was His Father’s. He said that the words He spoke, and the works He did, were not His, but were the outcome of His Father’s indwelling. “The living Father hath sent Me, and I live by the Father.” Thus it happened, that all who saw Him, saw His Father; and His life has been, for all the ages, a manifestation of the unseen God.

Similarly, for us who have believed, and, in believing, have received the germ of eternal life, He is willing to be all that His Father was to Him.

as the Source of %itc.

He is our life. To us to live is Christ. The Son of God liveth in us. The life of Jesus is manifest in our mortal flesh. As, in the olden vision, the precious oil came through the golden pipes to feed the temple-lamp, so does His life come through our faith to feed our spirits.

Happ y are they who are dead to their own life; who steadily ignore it and deny it — that the life of Jesus may have free scope in them to rise up into all the beauty and glory of perfect life! With Him is the fountain of life; would that all our fresh springs were ever consciously also in Him! We do not need to concern ourselves about the progress of His life within us, if only we are careful to mortify that other life, our own; and to obey all the throbbings and promptings of His life which is ever pining for fuller manifestation within us. Give yourself wholly up to Him, that He may live

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through your being, until He shall even quicken your mortal body, and raise it up in resurrection-glory.

He lives to lead on the Ages to all the Possibilities of Life. What lies before us we cannot tell — what glory, what radiant bliss, what rapture! We only know that He spake, not only of life, but of life “more abundantly.” And we are told that He will lead us “Unto fountains of waters of life.” George Fox tells of his dream, in which he saw the ocean of life sweep away the inky waters of death forever; but who shall fathom that ocean, or tell its expanse, its depth, its shores?

This is at least true — that He will never rest until He has enlarged our capacities to comprehend, and our hearts to receive, the fulness of His life. We are only learning its alpha bet. We are like a brood just out of the egg, lying close in the nest, taking only what is given us, and utterly ignorant of the undeveloped powers of flight, which shall enable us to flash in the sunny air. But the time is coming when we shall drink of His life, and live for ever with Himself.

Till then let us eat of His flesh, in rapt meditation on His words; and let us drink of His blood, in loving communion with His sacrifice and death; that so we may have His life abiding in us, and in the most emphatic sense may live by Him, until mortality shall be swallowed up of life. And of this let us be sure, that our spiritual life, though tried and tested, can never be extinguished, because it is guaranteed by One who

“EVER LIVETH.”