must have a Resurrection to explain the Cross, and then the Life and
the Death tower up into the manifestation of God in the flesh and the
propitiation for our sins. Without it we have nothing to preach which
is worth calling a gospel.

Again, a living Christ gives faith something to lay hold of. The
Apostle here in the context twice says, according to the Authorised
Version, that a dead Christ makes our faith 'vain.' But he really
uses two different words, the former of which is applied to
'preaching,' and means literally 'empty,' while the latter means 'of
none effect' or 'powerless.' So there are two ideas suggested here
which I can only touch with the lightest hand.

The risen Christ puts some contents, so to speak, into my faith; He
gives me something for it to lay hold of.

Who can trust a _dead_ Christ, or who can trust a _human_ Christ?
That would be as much a blasphemy as trusting any other man. It is
only when we recognise Him as declared to be the Son of God, and that
by the Resurrection from the dead, that our faith has anything round
which it can twine, and to which it can cleave. That living Saviour
will stretch out His hand to us if we look to Him, and if I put my
poor, trembling little hand up towards Him, He will bend to me and
clasp it. You cannot exercise faith unless you have a risen Saviour,
and unless you exercise faith in Him your lives are marred and sad.

Again, if Christ be dead, our faith, if it could exist, would be as
devoid of effect as it would be empty of substance. For such a faith
would be like an infant seeking nourishment at a dead mother's
breast, or men trying to kindle their torches at an extinguished
lamp. And chiefly would it fail to bring the first blessing which the
believing soul receives through and from a risen Christ, namely,
deliverance from sin. If He whom we believed to be our sacrifice by
His death and our sanctification by His life has not risen, then, as
we have seen, all which makes His death other than a martyr's
vanishes, and with it vanish forgiveness and purifying. Only when we
recognise that in His Cross explained by His Resurrection, we have
redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins, and by
the communication of the risen life from the risen Lord possess that
new nature which sets us free from the dominion of our evil, is faith
operative in setting us free from our sins.

So, dear friends, the risen Christ gives us something for faith to