beloved Son: hear ye Him.' The Psalmist of old had learned to trust
that his sonship and consecration to the Father made it impossible
that that Father should leave his soul in Sheol, or suffer one who
was knit to Him by such sacred bonds to see corruption; and the
unique Sonship and perfect self-consecration of Jesus went down into
the grave in the assured confidence, as He Himself declared, that the
third day He would rise again. The old alternative seems to retain
all its sharp points: Either Christ rose again from the dead, or His
claims are a series of blasphemous arrogances and His character
irremediably stained.

But we may also remember that Scripture not only represents Christ's
Resurrection as a divine act but also as the act of Christ's own
power. In His earthly life He asserted that His relation both to
physical death and to resurrection was an entirely unique one. 'I
have power,' said He, 'to lay down my life, and I have power to take
it again'; and yet, even in this tremendous instance of
self-assertion, He remains the obedient Son, for He goes on to say,
'This commandment have I received of My Father.' If these claims are
just, then it is vain to stumble at the miracles which Jesus did in
His earthly life. If He could strip it off and resume it, then
obviously it was not a life like other men's. The whole phenomenon is
supernatural, and we shall not be in the true position to understand
and appreciate it and Him until, like the doubting Thomas, we fall at
the feet of the risen Son, and breathe out loyalty and worship in
that rapturous exclamation, 'My Lord and my God.'

II. The Resurrection interprets Christ's Death.

There is no more striking contrast than that between the absolute