The grave in the garden reversed Adam's bringing of death into Eden.
Christ's resurrection as a fact bears on the belief in a future state as nothing else can.
It changes hope into certainty. It shows by actual example that death has nothing to do with the soul; that life is independent of the body; that a man after death is the same as before it. The risen Lord was the same in His relations to His disciples, the same in His love, in His memory, and in all else.
It changes shadowy hopes of continuous life into a solid certainty of resurrection life. The former is vague and powerless. It is impossible to conceive of the future with vividness unless as a bodily life. And this is the strength of the Christian conception of the future life, that corporeity is the end and goal of the redeemed man.
It changes terror and awe into joy, and opens up a future in which He is.
We shall be with Him.
Now we can go back to all these incomplete analogies and use them confidently. Our faith does not rest upon them but upon what has actually been done on this earth.
Christ is the First fruits of them that slept.' What will the harvest be?
As the single little seed is poor and small by the side of the gorgeous flower that comes from it; so will be the change. God giveth it a body as it hath pleased Him.'
How then to think of death for ourselves and for those who are gone? Thankfully and hopefully.
