p the resurrection of Christ. It is regarded as a summons to a
moral and spiritual resurrection within the breast of the
believer. As the great Forerunner had ascended to a spiritual and
immortal life in the heavens, so his followers should be inspired
with such a realizing sense of heavenly things, with such Divine
faith and fellowship, as would lift them above the world, with all
its evanescent cares, and fix their hearts with God. This high
communion with Christ, and intense assurance of a destined speedy
inheritance with him, should render the disciple insensible to the
clamorous distractions of earth, invulnerable to the open and
secret assaults of sin, as if in the body he were already dead,
and only alive in the spirit to the obligations of holiness, the
attractions of piety, and the promises of heaven. "When we were
dead in trespasses and sins, God loved us, and hath quickened us
together with Christ, and hath raised us up together and made us
sit together in heavenly places." "If ye, then, be risen with
Christ, set your affection on things above, not on earthly things;
for ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God." This
moral symbolic application of the resurrection is most beautiful
and effective. Christ has risen, immaculate and immortal, into the
pure and holy heaven: then live virtuously and piously, that you
may be found worthy to be received unto him. "He that hath this
hope purifieth himself, even as He is pure." Paul enforces this
thought through the striking figure that, since "we are freed from
the law through the death of Christ, we should be married to his
risen spirit and bring forth fruit unto God." And again, when he
speaks in these words, "Christ in you the hope of glory," we
suppose he refers to the spiritual image of the risen Redeemer
formed in the disciples' imagination and heart, the prefiguring
and witnessing pledge of their ascension also to heaven. The same
practical use is made of the doctrine through the rite and sign of
baptism. "Ye are buried with Christ in

21 Bretschneider forcibly illustrates this in his Handbuch der
Dogmatik der Evang. Luther. Kirche, sects. 156-158, band ii.

baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through faith in the
working of God, who hath raised him from the dead." "Wherefore, if
ye be dead with Christ, why are ye subject to worldly ordinances?
and if ye be risen with him, seek those things which are above."
When the disciple sunk bene