for the first point in this passage. A word or two
about the second--the triumph in the certitude of that Resurrection.

As I remarked at a previous point of this discourse, the Apostle has
been speaking about the consequences which would follow from the fact
that Christ was not raised. If we take all these consequences and
reverse them, we get the glad issues of His Resurrection, and
understand why it was that this great burst of triumph comes from the
Apostle's lips. And though I must necessarily treat this part of my
subject very inadequately, let me try to gather together the various
points on which, as I think, our Easter gladness ought to be built.

First, then, I say, the risen Christ gives us a complete Gospel. A
dead Christ annihilates the Gospel. 'If Christ be not risen,' says
the Apostle, 'our preaching,' by which he means not the act but the
substance of his preaching, 'is vain.' Or, as the word might be more
accurately rendered, 'empty.' There is nothing in it; no contents. It
is a blown bladder; nothing in it but wind.

What was Paul's 'preaching'? It all turned upon these points--that
Jesus Christ was the Son of God; that He was Incarnate in the flesh
for us men; that He died on the Cross for our offences; that He was
raised again, and had ascended into Heaven, ruling the world and
breathing His presence into believing hearts; and that He would come
again to be our Judge. These were the elements of what Paul called
'his Gospel.' He faces the supposition of a dead Christ, and he says,
'It is all gone! It is all vanished into thin air. I have nothing to
preach if I have not a Cross to preach which is man's deliverance
from sin, because on it the Son of God hath died, and I only know
that Jesus Christ's sacrifice is accepted and sufficient, because I
have it attested to me in His rising again from the dead.'

Dear brethren, on the fact of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is
suspended everything which makes the Gospel a gospel. Strike that
out, and what have you left? Some beautiful bits of moral teaching, a
lovely life, marred by tremendous mistakes about Himself and His own
importance and His relation to men and to God; but you have got
nothing left that is worth calling a gospel. You have the cross
rising there, gaunt, black, solitary; but, unless on the other side
of the river you have the Resurrection, no bridge will ever be thrown
across the black gulf, and the Cross remains 'dead, being alone.' You