The writer got into conversation in the train with a gentleman. He turned out to be an infidel. Testimony was adduced for the great fact of the resurrection of Christ. With a shudder the infidel replied in these exact words, “If you can prove the resurrection of Christ, I am bound to be some sort of a Christian.”
We can well understand his reply. The resurrection of Christ was miraculous and perfectly unique. That proved, Christianity is proved and infidelity disproved. It was God’s answer to all that He had claimed to be and to have done. It put the coping stone on His life and death. It was God’s great AMEN to every word that He had said on earth, every claim that He made, and above all it was the proof that the death of the Lord was accepted as sufficient atonement for sin.
The resurrection is one of the great pillars of the Christian faith. We might almost describe Christianity as resting upon a tripod, consisting of the Person of Christ, His death and His resurrection. If His Person was not all that the Scriptures claim it to be, His death must have been an immense failure and His resurrection an absolute impossibility. If His death had not satisfied God about the whole question of sin, then again, the resurrection was an impossibility. On the other hand if His Person was all the Scriptures claim it to be, and His work that which satisfied God about the sin question, then the resurrection was a glorious necessity, the insistent demand of righteousness.
A remarkable letter was recently published in The Times from the pen of Lord Daryngton, known formerly as Mr. Pike Pease, at one time Postmaster General. It runs as follows:
“Sir—Having been very much impressed by the two remarkable articles published in The Times relating to the evidence of the Resurrection of our Lord, I should like to mention the reply given by the late Lord Salisbury to someone who wrote to him asking him for his reason for his faith in Christianity. It should be remembered that he was not only a statesman, but a scientist of no mean capacity. He said that the central point of his faith was the Resurrection of Christ, in which he believed:
First, because it was testified to by men who had every opportunity of seeing and knowing, and whose veracity was tested by the most tremendous trials both of energy and endurance during long lives.
Secondly, because of the marvellous effects it had upon the world. He said that as a moral phenomenon the spread and mastery of Christianity were without a parallel, and added that he could no more believe that colossal moral effects lasting for 2,000 years could be without a cause than he could believe that various motions of the magnet were without a cause though he could not wholly explain them. He thought that anyone who believed in the Resurrection of Christ found little difficulty in believing in the rest of the story in the Gospels, and that no one who believed that would doubt that St. Matthew, St. Peter, St. Paul, St. Mark and St. John carried a Divine message.
If you can find space for this letter I shall be grateful, believing that testimony such as this is of special value at the present time.
Your obedient servant,
DARYNGTON.”
It has been often pointed out that no event in history has ampler proof than the resurrection of Christ. We write under date of 1930—that is 1930 years ago since Christ appeared. Is it not astounding that every day Christians and Infidels, Jews and Turks, Roman Catholics and Protestants, should all date their letters and business correspondence by the appearing of (as the world would say) an obscure carpenter’s son in an obscure village in an obscure country?
Yet so it is.
We, who are Christians, can understand the marvel for marvel it is. How is it that the impact of the Christian testimony by a handful of apostles, mostly “ignorant and unlearned,” has overridden the heathen pagan world and overcome the Jewish bigotry to this extent? Can we not read the secret in the mighty power of the Holy Spirit in this world? When Paul and Silas, two men with no organization behind them, with no committee of welcome, with no introductions to powerful prelates, entered pagan Thessalonica with a message that stirred the hatred of nearly all the inhabitants whether Jew or Gentile, it was said of them, “These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also” (Acts 17:6).
The Christian may well be an optimist. He may well be content that his faith is resting on settled facts, that he is on the winning side.