And there was the fault.

To be able to believe in one’s own resurrection, one willingly believed that Jesus arose. Yet the holy apostle had confessed the very opposite: “If the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised” (1 Cor. 15:16).

But did the world have to bother itself with the apostle? Egotistic is its worldly existence, and its egotism should triumph even over the grave. Easter must be for our sakes, prelude of a second existence of joy, when the joys of this world have ended in the grave.

So Easter did not bloom upon the root of personal faith, but upon communal egoism, and from that same egoism it borrowed the design, presently, when the Prince of lies should close up the grave of Jesus again, bravely and with unbroken courage to resist that lie of the Legend.

First then that unbelief crawled and creaped. In the circles of Free-masons and of barren thinkers faith in our Easter was long abandoned. But this was kept quiet. Among friends laughter began at the simplemindedness of the people that still rejoiced. But it was not openly confessed. This was not dared. A cry of abhorrence would have gone up, if then already openly in the market-place Jesus’ Resurrection had been denied.

But gradually the stream of this unbelief grew in volume. What was first a brooklet, swelled to become a river. Till at last the ministers of God’s Word began to lend themselves to this unbelief, and to the theology of those that attacked the Scriptures, and finally even the preachers of the Gospel witnessed against Immanuel.

This was done some fifty years ago. Then it broke out and through. No dam or dike was of any more avail. And indeed, for a while, in the first surprise, a murmur, a mumbling was heard among the masses. But in ten years’ time even that mumbling died away, and then the day was won. Only “fanatics” and “zealots” still felt offended. But to the world Easter was lost. And as gladly and jubilantly as once it had sounded from one part of the land to the other: “The Lord is risen indeed,” so venemously and passionately it now resounded in the bar-room and from the pulpit, from the university chair and in the yellow press: That Jesus should have risen is nothing but a fable.

So coarse egoism underwent its righteous punishment. God Himself took away from the turbulent egotistical world the sacred pledge of faith in the Resurrection of Immanuel.

God no longer tolerated play with the holiest.

You can believe in Jesus’ Resurrection only by “the Spirit of truth”, and Jesus Himself added thereto: “Whom the world can not receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him. But,” continued Jesus, “ye know him; for he dwelleth in you, and shall be in you” (St. John 14:17).

And again: “The world shall no more see me, but ye shall see me, for I live, and ye shall live” (vs. 19).

With this holy saying the church that had become worldly had mocked. She had wanted to make it untrue. It was her desire, that the world, without faith, should see the risen Savior.

And that egotistic Easter, that unholy Easter, in His righteous judgment God the Lord has snatched away from the world. And now it is again: He who believes, sees it, but the world does not see it, and can not see it, because she will not surrender her unholy spirit in exchange for the Holy Spirit.

Although there seems thus to be loss, in the truth there is gain.

Jesus’ own word that “the world can not see Him” is again become truth, and in the preaching of the faith the full, rich, sacred meaning of Easter has come into the light again in all its glory.

He who now still believes in Easter, stands again where the apostles stood.

Spiritual depth has come back in our Resurrection faith.

Think of what Paul wrote to the wealthy in sporting Corinth (15:4): I have not preached unto you merely, that Jesus rose from the dead, but in addition to this, that Jesus rose according to the Scriptures.

What does that say, what does it imply?

According to the Scriptures, does this mean: According to the Evangelical narrative, according to the report of Jesus’ Resurrection, which both Matthew and John have left us, that they have seen Jesus alive on the very day on which He rose?

It can not be this. For when Paul wrote to the Corinthians, there was no Gospel yet in writing, there existed no New Testament. There was nothing but the Old.

According to the Scriptures can only mean therefore, that you should believe, that Jesus was raised according to the Scriptures of Moses and all the prophets.

It is an echo to what the risen Savior Himself said on the way from Emmaus to Jerusalem, when He explained to Cleopas and Luke, going through Moses and all the prophets, that the Son of man must suffer all these things, and that that way of sorrows would end in Resurrection glory.

Rose according to the Scriptures. Not merely according to a single accidental word in those Scriptures of the Old Covenant, where there was mention of resurrection, or metaphorically resurrection was indicated.

No, according to the Scriptures, i. e. according to those Scriptures as a whole. According to those Scriptures in their rich fundamental significance.

Among all other nations it was altogether a groping about in darkness. But upon Israel a light had risen, the light of God’s holy Revelation. And of that Revelation the image had been caught in those Scriptures.

So those Scriptures of the Old Covenant imparted an altogether different look upon our human life, upon our human existence, upon the relation between God and man, upon the relation in man between soul and body, upon dying, upon the grave, and upon what beyond the grave should be the portion of each, in eternal sorrow or in everlasting joy.

According to those Scriptures not every individual walked by himself alone on the pathway of life, but all walked together as one generation, as the one humanity. Sunken away in one guilt. Going toward one death, and presently the eternal death. Helpless. Lost. Not salvable from and in itself. So that no flowers on the grave could avail, and every disguise is nothing but self-deception.

But also, according to those Scriptures there was a Savior, a Redeemer, a Goel appointed of God. God’s Annointed was to assume our flesh. He should be our Head. We should obtain again a Prophet, a Priest, a King. As a hero He would go before all. He would attack the powers of Hell and Satan. He would fight for us even to the blood.

But then, when He in and through death had shifted the burden of wrath and of guilt from us, then He would lengthen His days. Then there would be resurrection. Then life would rise from death.

If He did not arise, it would be, that God was vanquished and that Satan had won. But also, this was not possible, for as truly as God lives, God’s counsel shall stand.

And therefore according to the Scriptures He could not be held of death.

“Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, Thou wilt not suffer thy Holy One to see corruption.”

And so Jesus is risen.

And all they who believed according to the Scriptures, and have confessed and lived, have felt, that so it should be, and so was.

According to the Scriptures, and with those Scriptures there goes through the world an other, a sacred life-stream, which crosses the stream of the world.

And across that stream of the world there hangs nothing but the shadow of death. But across that holy stream according to the Scriptures there sparkles the light, tintillates the life. Here is Easter. Here is Resurrection. Here is Immanuel, Who arose.

For this reason the Old Testament had to be so violently opposed. Among some churches it was as good as put aside. Among us the memory is alive of days, when “New Testaments” were distributed for Bibles. And as though this were not enough, criticism arrayed itself to pull down the entire structure of the Old Testament. Among those who follow criticism there is in fact no more Old Testament. It is fallen apart. It has shown itself to be full of fables. It no longer exists as Testament. What for Jesus was “The Scriptures”, for the wise of our age is passed away.

And of course, when what Jesus honored as “the Scriptures” does no longer exist for you, then of itself falls away what should have happened according to those Scriptures. Thus what Paul wrote to the Corinthians: that Christ died according to the Scriptures, and that on the third day He was raised according to the Scriptures, was altogether imagination and selfdelusion.

There are no Scriptures, and thus nothing can happen according to “the Scriptures”. And so with the Scriptures of the Old Testament all our Easter passed away from the perception of the soul.

By nature a representation had been common among the peoples, which ended in death. Then God had given in Israel an entirely different representation, and that representation lay documented in the Scriptures.

Now this God-given representation is rejected again, and thus also the Scriptures, wherein it lay proclaimed.

So return was made to what once the heathen imagined. From life they sank back again into death. From the heavenly light return was made to the world’s darkness.

And so Easter could not stand.

Remained in the grave according to the world’s axioms! became the verdict of our age.

But among those that are known of the Lord in the very face of that denial, the joyful confession of Jesus’ Resurrection from the dead, is enriched and deepened.

The choir of those who still raise the Easter psalm, may have lost in numbers, in purity of tone it has gained. Among those that still sing this there are none who do not sing unto Immanuel from the heart. The life of the Spirit purls in their songs of jubilation.

And to what else do you owe this, save to the fact that now also your existence of soul, your experience of soul, all the world of your thoughts, is, what Paul would say, according to the Scriptures. Standing over against what the world puts forth as wisdom, but joined and adapted to what once God through Moses and the Prophets has revealed. Acknowledging your death, dying away from your false life in Christ, and now, through death, reaching after that eternal life, that Jesus, through death and grave, has brought to light.

A life, that indeed, presently, when God calls you, shall only then shine out before you in its fulness, but yet a life, of which now, already here, you feel the refreshing breath waft itself toward you, of which you are conscious in the fellowship of saints, that operates as an uplifting and animating power in your heart, that ever casts its light before you on the pathway of your life, and that only for a while allows itself to be held back by your sin.

Easter therefore does not come in addition to our life, but it is our life. Immanuel, Who arose, is to us the luminous center of history, from which radiate toward us all the beams of joy and exalted gladness. And what Immanuel became to the history of the ages, that He is become in a far more deeply felt sense to the history of our own heart; the central point about which moves all the life of our soul.

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