Pray to be able really
to confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus. Pray to believe with your
hearts that God has raised Him from the dead. Then when you are
tempted to do wrong, you, like Stephen, will see, not with your
bodily eyes, but by faith, the Lord Jesus sitting at God's right
hand, and be able to say to Him: "Lord Jesus, who hast conquered all
temptation, help me to conquer this. Thine eye is on me; how can I
do this great wickedness and sin against Thee?" When you are in
terror, and trouble, and affliction, and know not where to turn, that
same blessed thought--"Christ is risen from the dead"--will be a
shield and a strength to you which no other thought can give. "My
Lord is risen; He is here still--a man, with His man's body, and His
man's spirit--His man's love and tenderness; He has taken them all up
to heaven with Him. He is a man still, though He is very God of very
God. He rose from the dead as a man, and therefore He can understand
me, and feel for me still, now, here in England in this very year,
1852, just as much as He could when He was walking upon earth in
Judaea of old."
Ay, and in the black jaws of death, when this world is vanishing from
our eyes, and we are going we know not whither, leaving behind us all
we know, and love, and understand; then that thought of all thoughts--
"Christ is risen from the dead"--is the only one which will save us
from dark sad thoughts, from fear and despair, or from stupid
carelessness, and the death of a brute beast, such as too many die.
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