A Meditation for Easter Day: This is the Day which brought us salvation

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Categorised as Featured and published Saturday, April 11th, 2009
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A Meditation for Holy Saturday: Defeat and Victory
A Meditation for the Second Sunday of Easter: the Apostles, Representatives of Christ Right Arrow

An 'Anastasis' (symbolic representation of the Resurrection of Christ), panel from a Roman sarcophagus, c. 350 AD, Museum Pio Cristiano, Rome

Let us rejoice in the Day which He has made, and let us be “willing in the Day of His Power.” [Psalm 110: 3] This is Easter Day. Let us say this again and again to ourselves with fear and great joy. As children say to themselves, “This is the spring,” or “This is the sea,” trying to grasp the thought, and not let it go; as travellers in a foreign land say, “This is that great city,” or “This is that famous building,” knowing it has a long history through centuries, and vexed with themselves that they know so little about it; so let us say, This is the Day of Days, the Royal Day, the Lord’s Day. This is the Day on which Christ arose from the dead; the Day which brought us salvation. It is a Day which has made us greater than we know. It is our Day of rest, the true Sabbath. Christ entered into His rest, and so do we. It brings us, in figure, through the grave and gate of death to our season of refreshment in Abraham’s bosom. We have had enough of weariness, and dreariness, and listlessness, and sorrow, and remorse. We have had enough of this troublesome world. We have had enough of its noise and din. Noise is its best music. But now there is stillness; and it is a stillness that speaks. We know how strange the feeling is of perfect silence after continued sound. Such is our blessedness now. Calm and serene days have begun; and Christ is heard in them, and His still small voice, because the world speaks not. Let us only put off the world, and we put on Christ. The receding from one is an approach to the other. We have now for some weeks been trying, through His grace, to unclothe ourselves of earthly wants and desires. May that unclothing be unto us a clothing upon of things invisible and imperishable! May we grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour, season after season, year after year, till He takes to Himself, first one, then another, in the order He thinks fit, to be separated from each other for a little while, to be united together for ever, in the kingdom of His Father and our Father, His God and our God.

From the sermon ‘Difficulty of Realizing Sacred Privileges’ (1839) Click here for the full text (leaves site)