INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY. 66 R. H. DANA. O, LISTEN, man ! A voice within us speaks the startling word, O, listen ye, our spirits; drink it in From all the air. 'Tis in the gentle moonlight; The dying hear it, and, as sounds of earth 238 THE RESURRECTION. THE RESURRECTION. REV. HENRY MELVILL. HAD not Christ undertaken the suretyship of our race, there would never have come a time when the dead shall be raised. If there had been no interposition on behalf of the fallen, whatever had become of the souls of men, their bodies must have remained under the tyranny of death. The original curse was a curse of death on the whole man. And it cannot be argued that the curse of the body's death could allow, so long as unrepealed, the body's resurrection. So that we may lay it down as an undisputed truth, that Christ Jesus achieved man's resurrection. He was emphatically the Author of man's resurrection. Without Christ, and apart from that redemption of our nature which he wrought out by obedience and suffering, there would have been no resurrection. It is just because the eternal Son took our nature into union with his own, and endured therein the curse provoked by disobedience, that a time is yet to arrive when the buried generations shall throw off the dishonors of corruption. And if you call to mind the statement of St. Paul, "Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead," (1 Cor. xv. 21,) you will perceive that the resurrection came by Christ, in exactly the same manner as death had come by Adam. which Now, we know that death came by Adam as the representative of human nature; and we therefore infer that the resurrection came by Christ as the representative of human nature. Retaining always his divine personality, the second person of the Trinity took our nature into union with his own; and in all his obedience, and in all his suffering, occupied this nature in the character and with the properties of a head. When he obeyed, it was the nature, and not a human person, w obeyed. When he suffered, it was the nature, and not a human person, which suffered. So that, when he died, he died as our head; and when he rose, he arose also as our head. And thus, keeping up the alleged parallel between Adam and Christ,—as every man dies because concerned in the disobedience of the one, so he rises because included in the ransom of the other. Human nature having been crucified, and buried, and raised in Jesus, all who partake of this nature partake of it in the state into which it has been brought by a Mediator a state of rescue from the power of the grave, and not of a continuance in its dark dishonors. The nature had almost literally died in Adam, and this nature did as literally revive in Christ. Christ carried it through all its scenes of trial, and toil, and temptation, up to the closing scene of anguish and death; and then he went down with it to the chambers of its lonely slumbers; and there he brake into shivers the chain which bound it and kept it motionless; and he brought it triumphantly back, the mortal immortalized, the decaying imperishable; and "I am the resurrection" was then the proclamation to a wondering universe. Christ is more than the efficient cause of the 240 THE RESURRECTION. resurrection he is the resurrection. The untold myriads of our lineage rose in the resurrection of the new Head of our race. Never, O, never would the sheeted relics of mankind have walked forth from the vaults and the churchyards; never from the valley and the mountain would there have started the millions who have fallen in the battle tug; never would the giant caverns of the unfathomed ocean have yielded up the multitudes who were swept from the earth when its wickedness grew desperate, or whom stranded navies have bequeathed to the guardianship of the deep; never would the dislocated and decomposed body have shaken off its dishonors, and stood out in strength and in symmetry, bone coming again to bone, and sinew binding them, and skin covering them, had not He who so occupied the nature that he could act for the race, descended, in his prowess and his purity, into the chambers of death, and scattering the seeds of a new existence throughout their far-spreading ranges, abandoned them to gloom and silence till a fixed and on-coming day, appointing that then the seeds should certainly germinate into a rich harvest of undying bodies, and the walls of the chambers, falling flat at the trumpet blast of judgment, disclose the swarming armies of the buried marching onward to the "great white throne." (Rev. xx. 11.) "The resurrection and the life - these are thy magnificent titles, Captain of our salvation! And, therefore, we commit to thee body and soul; for thou hast redeemed both, and thou wilt advance both to the noblest and most splendid of portions. Who quails and shrinks, scared by the despotism of death? Who fears the dashings of those cold, black waters which roll between us and the promised land? Men and brethren, grasp your own privileges. Men and brethren, Christ Jesus has " abolished death." Will ye, by your faithlessness, throw strength into the skeleton, and give back empire to the dethroned and destroyed? Yes, "the resurrection and the life" "abolished death." Ye must indeed die, and so far death remains undestroyed. But if the terrible be destroyed when it can no longer terrify, and if the injurious be destroyed when it can no longer injure; if the enemy be abolished when it does the work of a friend, and if the tyrant be abolished when performing the offices of a servant; if the repulsive be destroyed when we can welcome it, and if the odious be destroyed when we can embrace it; if the quicksand be abolished when we can walk it and sink not; if the fire be abolished when we can pass through it and be scorched not; if the poison be abolished if we can drink it and be hurt not, then is death destroyed, then is death abolished, to all who believe on the resurrection and the life; and the noble prophecy is fulfilled,— bear witness, ye groups of the ransomed, bending down from your high citadel of triumph,-" O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction." (Hos. xiii. 14.) 66 I heard a voice from heaven - O for the angel's tongue, that words so beautiful might have all their melodiousness"saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth; yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors, and their works do follow them." (Rev. xiv. 13.) It is yet but a little while and we shall be delivered from |