O death where
is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? Thanks be to God, which
giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!"
If Courtland had been asked before he came there whether he believed in
a resurrection he might have given a doubtful answer. During the four
years of his college life he had passed through various stages of
unbelief along with a good many of his fellow-students. With them he had
made out a sort of philosophy of life which he supposed he believed. It
was founded partly upon what he _wanted_ to believe and partly upon what
he could _not_ believe, because he had never been able to reason it out.
Up to this time even his experience with the Presence had not touched
this philosophy of his which he had constructed like a fancy scaffolding
inside of which he expected to fashion his life. The Presence and his
partial surrender to its influence had been a matter of the heart, and
until now it had not occurred to him that his allegiance to the Christ
was incompatible with his former philosophy. The doctrine of the
resurrection suddenly stood before him as something that must be
accepted along with the Christ, or the Christ was not the Christ! Christ
_was_ the resurrection if He was at all! Christ _had_ to be that, _had_
to have conquered death, or He would not have been the Christ; He would
not have been God humanized for the understanding of men unless He could
do God-like things.
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