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Show i : 1 1 1 1 1 : 1 1 1 1 1 h 1 1 1 1 1 ) if I An a:st?r :: j- fHtfBHOXJP of -I Hopp ;; 'i i-i-M n : i i ; 1 1 1 1 1 1 n ! i ill I' HRIST is risen!" is tho y;7T,i regular salutation all over O'f! eastern Christendom on VV'j Easter Sunday morning. i'V. "j It Is the re-echo of the wonder cry of the first Christians as the realization at last forced itself upon them that the Impossible Im-possible had happened; Christ is risen! They had found it such a bitter thing to lay their beloved Master dead in the grave. Death always is bitter, usually us-ually almost impossible to bear up against. Of His death the disciples were certain cer-tain ; of their grief there could be no doubt. Every one of us who owns a little plot of holy ground, consecrated to us by what we could see through tears of an open grave, of falling clods of earth going to earth, can sympathize sympa-thize with them. We know what the blackness of that darkness is, from whence there comes no response to our cry. "Christ Is risen !" The message came on the first day of the week, with the risen Savior Himself as its proof. Sorrow fled, the blackness of the grave was changed into brightness of joy unspeakable un-speakable ; "Christ Is risen!" The grave had not imprisoned Him ! Death had not conquered Him ! His own pierced body was there again, endued with thrilling life once more. Ask His mother. She knows her Son. In the ecstasy of love, too full of joy even to wonder, hear her answei: "He Is risen, indeed !" Ay, Christ is risen ! And the grave has not hurt Him. Nay, He is the more glorious for it 1 His body is now superior su-perior to time and space, or to any of their laws ; just as the Easter lily is superior to the bulb you hid in the ground ; or, as the waving corn field is better than the bare grain in the sack. And the loved ones, even the little ones we laid with such sorrow in the grave, they, too, will rise in like manner, man-ner, all the better ; ay, ever so much better for the death which makes the resurrection possible ! Just as we, too, taken apart, bit by bit, by the tender alchemy of the grave, as the watchmaker watch-maker takes apart a watch, shall be yut together again, purified, glorified, to go on forever, and forevermore. |