Psalm 118:17 I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the LORD. This buoyant and hopeful language is obviously in place on Easter Day. The psalm which contains it was sung for the first time either at laying the foundation-stone of the new temple, or at its dedication: and it breathes, in every line, the spirit of thankfulness, of triumph, of hope. It is the hymn of the deliverance from the captivity, just as Miriam's song is the hymn of deliverance from Egypt: it is such a Te Deum as was possible when as yet the Gospel had not been revealed. I. THE MEANING OF THE WORDS AS USED BY CHRIST. Before His Crucifixion the words were a prophecy of the Resurrection. Unlike ourselves, out Lord throughout His earthly life knew what was before Him. From us the future is hidden in mercy: we could not bear the sight, it may be, if the veil were lifted. But our Lord surveyed everything. "I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!" And yet the foreknowledge which surveyed His coming agony surveyed also the peace and triumph beyond. He was to die, yet He was to rise; it was the prospect of death modified by the prospect of triumph over death; it was Calvary, but already irradiated by the Resurrection morning. "I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord." But after the Resurrection the words must have a fuller meaning: they became to Him more literally true. "Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more." II. We listen here to AN UTTERANCE OF THE HEART OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH, again and again heard during the centuries of her eventful history. In many ways the Passion and Resurrection of Christ have been reflected in the later fortunes of Christianity; and especially the Church's power of recovery from weakness and disaster is a note and proof of her union with Christ. 1. There has been the distress and suffering produced by outward persecution. At times it seemed as if the faith must be killed out from among men. But all through these dark and dreary years, the secret leaven of the Resurrection power of Jesus was working in the heart of Christendom. Never was the darkness so thick that no ray of light reached the soul of the suffering Church. Never was her cause so desperate but that she could, not boastfully or in scorn, but in the clear, albeit broken accents of faith and hope, utter her unfailing conviction: "The empire will pass, but Jesus Christ remains; 'I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord.'" 2. The Church has been exposed more than once to a more formidable danger, — the decay of vital convictions within her fold. This happened in the early part of the thirteenth century, when the Arabian philosophers of Moorish Spain were so widely read in the Universities of Europe, and caused for some years a secret but profound unsettlement of faith in the leading truths of Christianity. So again, at the revival of letters in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, especially in Italy. So also, and conspicuously in the eighteenth century, we may almost say, throughout Europe. The great anti-Christian campaign was opened in England by Bolingbroke, Tindal, and the English Deists. It was carried on in France by their pupil — for such virtually he was — Voltaire, and the Encyclopaedist writers. It found a powerful patron in Frederick the Great of Prussia. It closed, in Germany, with Lessing, who mistook criticism for faith, and to whom the search for truth seemed better than its possession; and with Nicolai, and other writers of the "enlightenment" period; while on the western bank of the Rhine, the worship of the goddess of Reason was keeping time with the horrors of the Revolutionary Tribunal and of the Reign of Terror. 3. Worst of all, the Church has been exposed to moral corruption. Here surely is an evil more perilous far than any persecutor's sword, or even than any form of intellectual-rebellion. Good men always feel strongly the evils of their own day; it is their business to recognize and to combat them. But in doing so they are sometimes led to think that no previous age has been so weighted with energetic mischief as their own. Here there is a risk of losing a true sense of proportion; of not merely exaggerating the evils of present as compared with those of past times, but of forgetting the Divine resources upon which the Church of Christ may always fall back, and which are more than equal to her needs. Let us be sure that to believe that Christ has risen is to know that, come what may, His Church will not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord. III. In these words we have THE TRUE LANGUAGE OF THE INDIVIDUAL CHRISTIAN SOUL, WHETHER IN RECOVERY FROM ILLNESS, OR FACE TO FACE WITH DEATH. 1. This is the language of the convalescent. The legend that the risen Lazarus was never seen to smile expresses the sense of mankind as to what beseems him who has passed the threshold of the other world; and surely a new and peculiar seriousness is due from those who have all but passed it, and have returned to life by little less than a resurrection. Of what remains of life the motto should surely be, "I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord." Surely such a life must be consecrated; like the Risen Jesus, and in virtue of His Resurrection power, it must declare the works of the Lord. 2. These words should express the feeling of every Christian soul, in the prospect of death and eternity. (Canon Liddon.) Parallel Verses KJV: I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the LORD. |
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