WHAT poor world! It has no more feast of Resurrection. In its halls of pleasure every hymn to Immanuel Who arose is silenced. No more Easter flower may unfold upon her fields. All it retained of the age-old Christian feast is, “The second Easter day” on which to indulge in pleasure.
And as you go abroad in Reformed, Lutheran, Romish or Grecian lands, you find no difference. Wherever the “enlightening” has penetrated, a dark cloud passed upon life and covered things with the darkness of death. Little children still believe in the grave that was opened. Country folks in distant parts do the same. Among every nation the Lord our God still has “His own”, a “little flock” that preserves the faithfulnesses, and lives by Jesus’ Resurrection life. But with the masses, throughout all Europe, during the last quarter century, Easter faith is radically worn out. Philosophers of this age went before, scholars followed with staring seriousness, and when by these leaders in the path of science it was shown, that all miracle is absurd, and that so also the miracle of Jesus’ Resurrection from the dead is a legend, second-hand scholars, in company of those that were enlightened and civilized, have dismissed Easter, and hoarsely the man in the street sang it after and with them, that we were done with Easter, excepting always the holiday.
Go along the streets and highways of our great cities, and knock at the palaces where the tone-giving classes dwell, and if you find one house in ten, in which on Easter-day the family kneels in thanksgiving and worship before Jesus’ Resurrection from the dead, you will find your boldest expectation surpassed.
People at large are beyond it. Death itself is defied. Every one must die. Then let it be done philosophically. So one yields to the necessity of nature. Whether on the other side of the grave anything follows, no one knows. Misery certainly there is none. Why then fear? And as a protest against fear the grave is made invisible underneath floral wreaths, till presently the grave-digger does away with the faded flowers.
Your heart trembles as you think of this. And yet, so it is and not otherwise. Death marks the end of all, and yet the world has wilfully blown out the lamp of Resurrection.
Philosophically to die and aesthetically to be buried, became the secret of weary submission, in which the de-Christianized world has withdrawn itself at the open grave.
Most of all it was preferred to see the grave disappear altogether, and so return is made to the cremation of the body of the ancient heathen world.
The course of history with respect to this is striking.
Paradise passed away, and death came, and then age upon age peoples and nations have pondered, how they might triumph over death. In old Egypt, with its glorious book of the dead, and in its “eternal cities of the dead” with embalmed body in the sarcophagus, the triumph seemed achieved. But the dead city remained a city of the dead. There was no life there. And the thought of dying set in somberness again, till the mysteries in imperial Rome brought a change, and in the days of Bethlehem a wondrous expectation took hold of the peoples of a deliverance from death that was to come.
And Jesus came. And Jesus died. And Jesus rose from the dead.
And, listen, from the Jerusalem of the Jews ascends for the first the song of a Psalm of life.
And the nations listen. The cry of “Immanuel arose” captures ear and heart. It is as though the shroud drops away, and as though a blush of immortal life imprints itself upon the radiant face.
Nation after nation seeks Baptism. Before long all of Southern Europe is won for Christ. The other part of Europe comes along. And long before the middle ages are ended, the whole then known world is Christianized, and Easter is celebrated in every home, and from sea to sea, and from the rivers to the end of the earth, resounds the song of jubilation, that Jesus overcame death, and in one breath it is asked: “O Death, where is thy sting; O Grave, where is thy victory!” And the “The Lord is risen indeed” imparts every year, as Easter returns, new vigor of life and new courage for life to the heart.
So it glittered, but not all of what glittered in the jubilation was “the gold of faith”. Far from it. With fulness of faith sang among all nations only small minorities. The masses, then too, were worldly. Money rather than faith and pleasure rather than joys of heaven. But one was adrift upon the stream of churchly life. There was no desire yet to remove the sacred picture from the frame and tear it up. Life was more beautiful than death, and therefore Easter was more interesting than the grave.
There was still something of the dread of death in the heart, and therefore Jesus attracted. He had swallowed up death and grave.
At length one could not imagine life without Easter.
Jesus’ Resurrection, that one might himself once rise, was the faith and the hope that was printed in all hearts and that put its stamp upon life.