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Show Real Lesson 'of the Empty Tomb in Paul's Words The Eastci thought is thus phrased by St. Paul : "If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above. Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth. Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, urr cleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which Is idolatry; for which things' sake the wrath of God conieth In the children of disobedience: in the which ye also "walked some time, when ye lived in them." Men have thought and preached so much about the empty tomb, in their effort to prove the resurrection resur-rection as to have entirely overlooked the question asked by the angel of ihe resurrection. "Why seek ye t lie living among the dead?" That has been what many have been doing for twenty centuries, cen-turies, and are still doing. There were those whom the empty tomb did not convince the women thought Ihe body had been stolen, it Is 'Indeed written of one of the disciples that, when he entered the tomb, "he saw and believed." be-lieved." Of St. Peter tt Is written: "Then arose Peter, and ran into the sepul-cher; sepul-cher; and stooping down, he beheld the linen clothes laid by themselves, and departed, wondering in himself at that which was come to puss" plainly plain-ly he was not convinced, but bewll dered. What did convince His disciples dis-ciples was communion with Him. a renewal of the old association and fellowship, the happy consciousness of His presence which they knew would he an abiding one. and the tender ten-der words that He spoke to them. Then It was that they knew He was alive, alive forevertnore, and realized that they were called to follow a living liv-ing and not a dea l Leader. They saw that "in Him was life; and the light was t lie life of men." Also they realized and they never lost their grip on the thought that death and the grave were but the gate opening on a larger, finer, happier anil nobler life. "P.ecause I live, ye shall live also" I 1 such was the assurance given by Christ to His disciples on the eve of His departure from rhem. It was the assurance of a life unbroken hy death, of continued and uninterrupted fellowship fellow-ship with Himself. Argument on the subject is, and ever has been, for the most part futile. The most that has ever been proved was that there was a moral probability of immortality and that is much. Rut for the Christian. Chris-tian. Easter is the festival of the life eternal, and he must feel that the assurance of his Master "Because I live, ye shall live also" Is as truly for him as for those to whom the words were first spoken. Yet comparatively compar-atively few Christians, It Is feared, give much thought to the subject perhaps because they shrink from the contemplation of death. And that fa to be regretted. There are some doctrines doc-trines held and preached hy the churches which ought to he, and in time will be, abandoned, but the doctrine doc-trine of Immortality Is not one of them. On tlia contrary, It should be more and more stressed, for It may be. as it was in the first days of Christianity, a great power in human life. It will he remembered that St. Paul was sure that I here was laid up for him "a crown of righteousness." If might be expected that he would have said "a crown ot life." But "a crown of righteousness" is a crown of lite, for righteousness is Itself life. So we are privileged lr enter Into the joy of another Easter, and once more to think of It as the foretaste of an immortality which is in truth or may he a present possession. Arnold puts it well, though perhaps somewhat severely se-verely : No, no! the energy of life may be Kept on after the grave, hut not begun. And he who flapped not In the earthtT strife, From strength to strength ndvancjng onlv he. Hip soul weM-knit. and all hfe battles won. Mounts, and that hardly, to eternal t'.fe Indianapolis News. |