The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1867-04-22

miracle, until the rising heap scIapeu anu ,d
the very stars of heaven. He threw All asouni9 asnri
his path the gorgeous Jewels OF @ thSS
truth the dust Of baanty as tread anG %aS the
flowers that sprang from IT SHAH never qISe. qe
Before Him fled the evil spirit d ioyIed
word; behind Him rang the pteans anu az D ~, noWo9 d
the tears of the poor and the SICK nc @ @hau
blessed and heeled and al arounHa St Ne had oome
forth from His Father; and yet Ills l9eS WeISS
not won, Sometimes the common % pe0PlG Pa a5gaS
by n fit of enthusiasm that they would taln nave |
caught Him and made Him king
on one OCCASION SO high rose the popular ad- |
miration that triumphal entrance into Jeru |
salem was awarded him. the people SET SET HIN Him |
on an ass, scattered palm branches IN his pain, |
and spread their garments before Him, and the |
very children shouting hosanna bade him well |
All this was shorL-lived. His enemies looked !
on with increasing spite, ana continued 10
The contest deepened. Jesus is approaching
the hour and power of darkness. JL das be-
trays him, The mockery of trial white
washes a murderous sentence. He dies dis
honoring death, and finally is bur led. "The
stone guards the sepulchre, the boman seal
gnaTds the stone, and the soldiers guard the
Seal" Scribe and Pharssee, High Priest and
saducee gnash thelT teetm nde sho an end of tSe
Son OF the Carpenter. We VIII nave no peg,
gar for our king sleep quietly, son OF d' Mary, E
but is near at hand. The Marys weep, with
their love as their sole legacy. The disciples
are all like Peter when he was sinking in the
sea only that there is no Master at hand to
reach them the needed aid. They have ven.
emptied the grave of Lazarus can vacate His
own. The last and worst thing His enemies
could do TO Him was TO take His life; but what
| folly in them and in His disciples TO consider
| that a victory. What was death TO HimP He
accepted the opiate of the cross and the sleep OF
the tomb, and rested until the third day. Then,
| at the moment of apparently confirmed defeat,
| the tide of battle turned, and "Vlctory ~ "Vio-
| toryp' resounded among the scattered, aston
| ished, and now reviving disciples The JOY OF
the first Easter was the 10Y 9t victory 1S tne
| among the foes and friends of the risen Jesus.
The joy of Easter is not only the joy of VIC
sstency. IL is a SAD word when one passing by
| shall look on us and say:-"Ye began to build.
| but were not able to finish" 1t Is a cutting
rebuke when we deserve 1t to be taunted With
| "Ye did run well; who did hinder you, that ye
the word is, sis jewel, provided always it be
| genuine. There IS, indeed, mere mechanical
| sent the ASPECT of a dead level Of uniformity in
the life; which calls all improvement change,
and all reyolutlon, whether in principle or
ever to the dead past and denouncing advance
ment as innovation and folly, dies in the ruts
been needed, the world would still
having been travelling at the rate Of three
needles would still have been made with ham
mer and tongs; steam and lightning would
have remained still undomesticated, Columbus
and Watt and Fulton would have died in mad
houses, and Luther and Calvin and Wesley
| would have been knocked on the head and put
out OF the way as soon as they appeared. The
proud stark, frozen consistency which rots in
maintaining itself would have been preserved.
And what world we should have had, it,
indeed, by this time we had had any
Tue consistency is bold. 1t is the
wholesome and purifying revolutions. 1t is
logical because honest. It sees new results
them. Such consistency has always
marked the heroes and martyrs OF our race.
This is eminently true in religion. When the
Church has buried herself under her accumu-
lating forms and forgotten their meaning;
when she has strangled truth in its gorgeous
robes, her heroes have looked through the rail-
ment of ages and seen the life and blood of
truth, and set themselves to deveope and libe-
rate it. But straightway they have been
branded and hunted and sacrificed as heretics,
as introducers of new doctrine. Not so. They
had only got to the kernel of the old truth, and
shown 1t to men with its dishguring raiment
stripped OIL and In new and glorious appli-
When such a conspicuous example of noble
manhood has come on the stage how interest
ing it has been to watch his development! AS
history, or in the unfolding drama of the pre-
sent. How anxious we are that the end may
not blast the promise of the noble beginning
and midway, progress! If he weakly falters,
had more than halfway climbed - how
wreck Richard Cobden, who lately died,
bemoaned by the, friends of freedom
human rights in England. He spent ms life
laboring toimprove the condition of the masses
He stood side by side with the poor. When he
rose to power the aristocratic party tried to buy
him. Twice did they offer him place in the
CABINET. 10 accept would nave been TO sell out
and come down from his lofty position. Had
he done so, his humiliation would have sent a
pang to every heart that loved mankind. He
nobly refused, He had met hostility, he could
also Withstand craft and Establishment and
bribe; and his nobly sustained consistency
yields even now thrill of joy to all hearts in
sympathy with human rights
Or TO change the sphere of the illustration,
suppose grand old Luther had wilted before
the Emperor at the Diet of Worms, and signed
a recantatlon! How painful is the very thought!
In that case Luther had not been Luther. Then
would there have been no Luther in Church
the holy Scriptures" They could not, and
there he stood, a single monk against two en-
pires, the secular and the spiritual, greater and
stronger than both of them. And there he
rugged, volcanic, explosive, rich with the tro-
phles of battered Rome, and crowned with the
Il gratitude of all the reformed churches.
But the JOY of Easter is the Joy of still higher
consistency. Jesus, TO the Jews OF His day, was
also an innovator. They saw their expected Mes
siah through eyes OF greed and ambition. He
must, in their view, be plumed warrior and q
sceptred prince. Jesus would not be such, and
yet He would be Messiah King. He warred with
their errors to the last and died. But the death
which in other heroes of men was the noble end
OF consistent life, seemed inconsjstentin him,
or at least, IL would become inconsistent II He
remained under the domiEion of death, He had
said He must rise from the tomb He had said
He had power to lay His life down and to take
~ again, Ay; more than that, lie was Lord OF
the living and the dead The world was made
by Him, and He was in thebeginninglwith God.
He had declared that He would judgeth world,
gathering all nations at His bar as shepherd
gathers his foeks. And shall He remain in the
grave like one OF His own creatures? Other
miracle workers, doing their works in the name
OF another, might sleep on In the dust OF
death; but Jesus, who wrought miracles
IN ms own name, and had miracles wrought
IN His name by others, must vindicate His
claim 10 be Lord of life. No sign OF mortality