Reflect on these things, my beloved. It is sometimes said that so few of those who make their confirmation vow remain loyal. To me it is inspiring that so many do remain loyal when you consider the influence and the atmosphere in the homes they come from. Never a Christian word escapes the lips of the mother; all kinds of political, secular newspapers and books are daily read, never a line of God's Word or a church-paper. All sorts of time set aside for visits and trivialities on God's day, never for divine service.
There remains yet the third and last verse: "And let us arise and go up to Bethel; and I will make there an altar unto God, who answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way which I went." Jacob arrives at Bethel, he looks around, he discovers the stone, now covered with moss, which, twenty-eight years ago, had served as his pillow. What feelings must have throbbed through his soul! what shame! what joy! And he fulfills his vow, erects an altar, does God honor and service, and gives the tenth to Him of all he possesses.
The application of all this? To you who have this day laid down upon God's altar your vow of allegiance, let Jacob be to you an example of warning. God greatly disapproved of Jacob's delay, his forgetting and breaking of promise, and, as we heard, he himself suffered by it,—wickedness, strange gods, had gotten into his household. Vastly more noble than his conduct was that of the woman who one day appeared in the temple leading by the hand a lad, and, presenting him to the high priest, said: "For this child I prayed, and the Lord hath given me my petition which I asked of Him. Therefore, also, I have lent him to the Lord; as long as he liveth, he shall be lent to the Lord." You know who he was—Samuel, afterwards Israel's high priest and judge. May you prove to be Samuels brought hither to the temple, become useful members. It is only thus you may glorify God. Or, those who, perchance like Jacob, have neglected their vows, who blush to recall them, let them take this episode to heart, strive with the aid of that God who called Jacob's vow to remembrance to fulfill their engagements; following the patriarch, may they say: "Let us go up to Bethel," that means, to the house of God. The Lord grant you Christian courage and determination! Amen.
EASTER.
Marvel not at this, for the hour is coming in the which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation.—John 5, 28. 29.
"Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in hope of the resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ." These solemn words, pronounced at the most solemn time, at the close of man's earthly career, are familiar words, and each Lord's day do we confess in words equally as familiar: "I believe in the resurrection of the body." In that committal and confession we say much. We voice a belief that is peculiarly, distinctively Christian. Natural reason, assisted by some light lingering in tradition and borrowed from the Jews, was able to spell out the immortality of the soul; but that the body should rise again, that there should be another life for this corporeal frame, was a hope which has been brought to light by revelation only. When natural man hears the doctrine the first time, the mere natural mind marvels. The next thing it does, as the philosophers at Athens, when Paul preached it unto them,—it mocks.
"Can these dry bones live?" is still the unbeliever's sneer. The doctrine of the resurrection is a lamp kindled by a hand which once was pierced. It is linked with the resurrection of our blessed Lord, and is one of the brightest gems in His crown. Throughout the writings of the holy apostles do we find them giving great prominence to this truth. The Apostle Paul, as he describes the Gospel by which true believers are saved, says: "I deliver unto you first of all that which I received,—how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day, according to the Scriptures," and argues that, "if Christ be not raised," both your faith and our preaching are "in vain." In the early Church the doctrine of the resurrection was the main battle-ax and weapon of war. Wherever the first missionaries went, they made this prominent that the dead would rise again to be judged by the Man Christ, according to the Gospel. It is, indeed, the keystone of the Christian arch. Let us, then, to the honor of Christ Jesus, the Risen One, regard this article of our faith so prominent in the Easter thought of man, observing I. The certainty of the resurrection, II. its results.
"The hour is coming," saith the Savior. Those words spoken by the Mouth of Truth express certainty. There are some events which may or may not be. Kingdoms and the great powers of the earth may stand or they may fall, their throne broken into dust and their might wither like autumn leaves. Events which we suppose inevitable may never come to pass, another wheel in the machinery of Providence may make things revolve in quite another fashion from what our puny wisdom would foretell. There is nothing certain on this earth, in fact, but uncertainty. But the resurrection is certain, whatever else may be contingent or doubtful. "The hour cometh," it surely cometh. In the divine decree it has been so unchangeably fixed. "The hour," saith Christ. I suppose He calls it an hour to intimate how very near it is in His esteem, since we do not begin to look at an exact hour of an event when it is extremely remote. An event which will not occur for hundreds of years is at first looked for and noted by the year, and only when we are reasonably near it, do men talk of the day of the month, and we are coming very near it when we look for the precise hour. Christ intimates to us that, whether we think so or not, in God's thoughts the day of resurrection is very near. He would have us think God's thought about it, not reckon any time too distantly and the event far away.