ing what we are, we
cannot let ourselves off. Pain is at once the consequence of sin and
the token of our divine lineage. But there is nothing individualistic
about this sinning and suffering. All the love in the universe comes
to the help of the soul that tries to rise. It will even enter the
prison house along with it and accept the cross in the endeavour to
hasten the emancipation of the sinbound soul. In fact, it must do so,
for as long as there is any sin to be done away, love cannot have its
perfect work. This it was which brought Jesus to earth, and this it is
which turns every follower of Jesus into a saviour. Love must strive
and suffer with sin until God is all in all.

+The spiritual resurrection.+--It follows from this that the true
resurrection is spiritual, not material, and this is the sense in which
the word is most frequently employed in the New Testament. In the
fourth gospel Jesus is represented as saying, "I am the resurrection,
and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall
he live: and he that liveth and believeth in me shall never die." This
is a great saying, and the writer of this particular gospel meant every
word of it in the sense I have just indicated. He makes the eternal
Christ the speaking terms of the earthly Jesus and tells us that the
uprising of this eternal Christ within the soul of the penitent sinner
is the real resurrection.

+The resurrection of Jesus.+--But this subject of the resurrection
demands a further examination. We have already seen how inconsistent
popular Christian doctrine is about the matter, and yet Christianity
started with the belief in a resurrection of our Lord, a belief which
has continued down to the present day. What are we to say about this?

We may as well admit at the outset that the gospel accounts of the
physical resurrection of Jesus are mutually inconsistent and that no
amount of ingenuity can reconcile them. Matthew speaks of a Galilean
appearance, and says nothing about the ascension. Luke says a great
deal about the Jerusalem appearances, nothing about Galilee, and tells
us that the ascension took place from Bethany. The end of St. Mark's
gospel has been lost, and the last few verses are a summary of the
accounts in the other gospels concerning the post-resurrection
appearances of the Lord. John's version is, of course, less historical
than the synoptists, and puts the last appearance at the sea of
Tiberias.