THE RESURRECTION.

(John xx:11-23.)

I. The Analysis.

1. The weeping woman. Peter and the others could be satisfied to know the truth; Mary must go on to find Him. The same contrast is often seen to this day. Some believers live on doctrines; others, knowing the doctrines too, cannot be satisfied without Himself.

2. The unrecognized Christ. Mary "supposed" Him to be the gardener. Supposings are poor things. Christ's own mother went a day's journey "supposing Him to be in the company," only to find at night that she had gone a whole day without Him.

3. He calleth His own sheep by name, "Mary."

4. Peace through the shed blood, and the Spirit out-breathed and inbreathed.

II. The Heart of the Lesson.

The doctrinal heart of this lesson is, of course, the fact of the resurrection, and the scriptural implications which go with that fact. Paul makes the verity of the Gospel message to depend on the historicity of the resurrection of the body of Jesus Christ. "And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that He raised up Christ: whom He raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not." The last clause, as we see, associating with the resurrection of Christ the future resurrection of the believer.

There is peculiar need in our day of the reaffirmation of this fundamental truth of the Christian faith. Indeed, from the earliest times there has been manifested a special enmity of Satan toward this particular doctrine. "How say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?" "But some man will say, How are the dead raised up?"

Hymenseus and Philetus "erred, saying that the resurrection had passed already," and so overthrew the faith of some. Paul declared that error to be a "gangrene" in the Christian faith.

The early church did not err, but there were erroneous teachings on this most vital subject; and it was a sense of the need of constant restatement of the basal truths of Christianity which led to the establishment of what is called the church year. This expedient is open to the grave objection that it establishes "times and seasons," and the observance of "days," against the spirit of the present dispensation, but some such repeated testimony to the pillar truths is necessary.

But Christ, in His recorded words as given in our lesson does not make the fact that He was risen the central thing. The emphasis of His words falls rather on the missionary impulse. It is not that He did not at once give every proof of the fact that he was risen, but that this was to Him self-evident, and he sought to turn at once the newly awakened hope and courage and zeal of His disciples toward the regions beyond.

This may be said to form the practical heart of the resurrection lesson, as the fact forms the doctrinal heart.

The emphatic word of that resurrection morning is, "Go tell." (Matt. xxviii:7, 9, 10, 19; Mark xvi:15; Luke xxiv:46-49; John xx:21). The disciples' understandings were opened that they might understand the Scriptures, but that to the end that "repentance and remission of sins might be preached in His name among all nations." The disciples were glad when they saw the Lord, but He said: "As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you."

In Matthew's account the missionary impulse comes out with special emphasis. "Go quickly and tell . . . and as they went to tell . . . Jesus met them . . . then said Jesus unto them, Be not afraid: go tell."

In John's account, which is our especial lesson for today, the missionary impulse is enforced by that saying of our Lord's which has been so perverted by the papacy: "Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained."

On these words, as all know, have been built the tremendous pretensions of the papacy in respect of sins. This is not the place in which to expose those pretensions. Surely, the words mean something, and that meaning must be inexpressibly solemn. Is it not this: that Christ has put into our hands, administratively, the only possible means by which men may receive the remission of their sins—the Gospel? "For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher?"

No, the responsibility for the remission of sins is not on a priestly hierarchy, but on us.