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THE K I N G ' S B U S I N E S S
What was the effect of the preaching? The women departed quickly from the sepulchre with fear and great joy, and did run to bring His disciples word. Haste, joy, energy, this' is the mission ary way, this is the true ministerial way, this is the great lecture upon the method of preaching. They departed quickly with fear and great joy, rever ence and infinite rapture, and did run to bring his disciples word. We have fallen into a mean amble, we have slunk off and let every racer beat us; the gospel messenger lags somewhere in the rear, he is outrun by many a man. We want more quickness, more energy, more running power in the church. We are indifferent, we are respectable, we are reluctant, we are calculating, we are selfish. Rather would I belong to a Christianity that is censurable from a worldly point of view by reason of its vehemence and energy, than belong to some perversion of Christianity which regards its religion and its slumber as coequal and synonymous terms. And as they went—it always so hap pens! A thing is never complete in itself; incident runs into incident, and the whole work is carried on with infin ite skill to perfectness, to symmetry and life. “And as they went,” Jesus met them! Jesus Christ always meets His messengers or joins them or over takes them: He is always with His angels to the end of the world. And Jesus said, “Go.” Some day we shall collect the incidents in which that word Go is used, and we shall see how wonderfully God’s Spirit always points in the direction of movement, aggres sion, energy. “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every crea ture.” With such a “GO” ringing in our ears, with the resonance of a thun der-trumpet, who will sit down or stand still or forget his errand?
THE RESURRECTION ATTESTED OULD not the testimony which can be alleged for Christ’s resurrection be enough to guarantee any event but this? And if so, why is it not enough to guarantee this too? If (as nobody denies) the early church within ten years of Christ’s resurrection believed in His resurrection, and were ready to go, and did, many of them, go to their death in assertion of their veracity in declaring it, then one of two things,—Either they were right or they were wrong; and if the latter, one of two things—If the resurrection be not a fact then that belief was either a delusion or deceit. Not a delusion, for such an illusion is altogether unexampled; and it is absurd to think of it as being shared by a multitude, like the early church. Nations have said, “Our King is not dead—He is gone away and He will come back.” Loving disciples have said, “Our teacher lives in solitude, and will return to us.” But this is no parallel to these. This is not fond imagination giving an apparent sub stance to its own creation, but sense recognizing first the fact, “He is dead,” and then, in opposition to expectation, and when hope had sickened to despair, recognizing the astounding fact, “He liveth that was dead.” And to suppose that that should have been the rooted conviction of hundreds of men who were not idiots finds no parallel in the history of human illusions, and no analogy in such legends as those to which I have referred. Not a myth, for a myth does not grow in ten years. And there was no motive to frame it if Christ was dead and all was over. Not a deceit, for the character of the men, and the character of the associate morality, and the obvious absence of all self-interest, and the persecutions
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