Through crowded streets of populous towns and lonely lanes of silent villages, in lordly palace and before straw-thatched hovels, to listening throngs and wayside hearers, it rang forth its wondrous proclamation.
It told men that a man had been here who had proven himself stronger than death and mightier than the grave; a man who had burst the bars of death asunder, spurned the sepulchre wherein human hands had laid his body, had ascended up on high, and now, from heaven’s throne, had power to impart to men a life that hated sin, rejoiced in virtue, could make each moment of earth’s existence worth while, and carried within it the assurance and prophecy of eternal felicity.
Far and wide, over land and sea, it rang the tidings that this perfect life might be had by king or cotter, by freeman or slave, without money and without price, for so simple a thing as genuine faith in, and open confession of, him who had died and risen again.
With rich, exultant note it announced that he who as very God had clothed himself with a new and distinct humanity, who had loved men unto death and died for them, had not forgotten the earth wherein he had suffered, his own grave from whence he had so triumphantly risen, nor yet the graves of those who had confessed his name; but, on the contrary, was coming back in personal glory and with limitless power to raise the dead, transfigure the living, make them immortal, and so change this earth that it should no longer be a swinging cemetery of the hopeless dead, but the abiding home of the eternally living sons of God.
Men held like Laocoon in the winding coils of sinuous and persistent sin, and who vainly sought to escape from its slowly crushing embrace, heard the good news and turned their faces towards the rising hope of present deliverance.
Men standing in the shadow of the tombs and waiting their turn smiled until their smiles turned into joyous laughter as they said: “If we die, we shall live again—the grave shall not always win its victory over us.”
Do you wonder the world stopped, listened, and that multitudes turned and followed after?
Do you wonder that this Christianity of the primitive centuries triumphed so phenomenally?
This is the Christianity we need to preach today.
It is full of a great body of doctrine.