builder's task when amidst the decaying futilities around him he sets stone upon stone; and well may he re-echo the antiphonal welling up from the ages:

Except the Eternal build the house, they labour in vain that build it.

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CHAPTER IV

Resurrection

HOULD any one desirous of learning the truth ask what was the central fact around which the development of the early Christian Church ranges itself, the answer which must in accord with truth be given, may possibly cause some surprise. The ideas which moved the Apostles and leaders in the first inspiration of the new faith have for many centuries been overlaid by ideas of another order. For while the immense spiritual activities of the Apostles centred around one supreme and dominating fact, the whole body and superstructure of later Christian doctrines, both in the Catholic and the Protestant sections, have centred around another fact. Surprising as this statement may be, a little honest enquiry will show that such is the case; and closer research will confirm it. The creeds of the orthodox Catholic Churches, the confessions of the dissenting bodies, Calvinistic and Arminian alike, all hinge around a pivot other than that about which the faith of the first Christians turned. High Church, Low Church, Broad Church, and Free Church are all in the same case: they have all made the same departure from Primitive Christianity.

For whereas the central point of all these as they

are to-day, in their teachings and systems, is the death of the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross, and the Atonement effected as they hold by that death, the central point of the Primitive Church was quite other. Let me guard myself here by saying that some orthodox theologians would dispute the accuracy of the statement, and would declare that with them the central point is not the death of Christ but His Birth, not the Atonement but the Incarnation. Be it so but these very theologians regard in practice the sacrament of the Eucharist, whether called Mass or not, as the most sacred and necessary of the ordinances; and that sacrament is nothing if it be not a commemoration of the death of Jesus on the cross. Even if we admit their contention, it does not touch the case, because the central fact dominating the faith, the life, the works, the words of the first Christians was neither the birth nor the death of Christ.

The great central fact was the Resurrection.

That this was indeed so, shall be presently made clear; but first let us dispose of two objections that may be raised. It may be said that had Christ not

died there could have been no resurrection from the dead, and that the latter implies the former. This is an obvious truism; but it in no way disposes of the point. It is equally true that Christ could not have died if He had not been born; and yet many people attribute to His death a very different efficacy from that which they attribute to His birth. A second objection is that the birth, life, death, and resurrection of our Lord are all bound up together in one scheme of redemption. Admitting the proposition as a proposition, and without stopping

to enquire here what an objector might precisely mean by the term "scheme," it may be at once replied that whether it be so or not, this has not hindered pious believers in one place or another from setting forth with special emphasis some one or other of these four facts as the all-important one that overshadowed the others. And, whether they held this proposition or not, the early Christians were not hindered from so laying an almost exclusive emphasis. And that on which they laid this emphasis was neither birth nor death but resurrection.

Let us begin with the Acts of the Apostles. It opens with an account of the forty days, and then at once proceeds to the narrative of the election of an Apostle to fill the place of Judas. The hundred and twenty disciples called together by Peter met to select one of the company to "be ordained" (as the the old version has it) or to "become (as the revised version has it) "a witness with us of His resurrection." There is no mistaking what was in this procedure stated to be the essential. Peter's address on the Pentecostal day is equally emphatic when he maintained that the resurrection of the Lord had triumphed over the crime of the crucifixion, claiming that thus He had fulfilled the prophecy of the patriarch David, who "foreseeing this spoke of the resurrection of Christ" that "neither was He left in Hades, nor did His flesh see corruption," adding : "This Jesus did God raise up, whereof we all are witnesses." Again, in the speech of Peter at the porch called Solomon's, he said: "But ye denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted unto you and killed the Prince of Life; whom God raised from the dead; whereof

we are witnesses.” The language shows that he regarded the crucifixion as a shameful and abominable crime; the resurrection as the starting point for the new evangel. His language was unmistakable to his hearers, for the immediate effect was, we are told, to bring down upon him and the other disciples forcible arrest by the priests and the captain of the temple, because "they taught the people and proclaimed in Jesus the resurrection from the dead." In Peter's defence the main point was that what he had done had been done in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, "whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead." Following this, we read how "the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and soul," and that "with great power gave the Apostles their witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus." The phrase "multitude of them that believed," merits a passing attention in view of the narrow meaning sometimes put on the term "believer." Clearly, here at least, belief has nothing to do with this or that specific doctrine of modern orthodoxy as formulated in the creeds. "Them that believed" means them that believed the teachings of Peter and the rest as witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus. Peter was put in prison; but an angel of the Lord by night opened the prison doors and gave the apostles a definite command what they were to say to the people. The command is significant; the reference to the evangel of resurrection, and the absence of any reference to any gospel of salvation by death cannot be mistaken. "Go ye, and stand and speak in the temple to the people all the words of this life." When rearrested Peter reiterated, "We are witnesses of these things."