Easter Counsels and Cautions

BY THE

Rev. HENRY A. NELSON, D.D.

[AS SPOKEN TO HIS OWN PEOPLE]

PHILADELPHIA

PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION

1334 CHESTNUT STREET

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No. 209.

EASTER:

COUNSELS AND CAUTIONS.

BY THE

Rev. HENRY A. NELSON, D.D.

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The day known as “Easter Sunday” is made by many Christian people a day of annual observance in commemoration of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead. There is no scriptural warrant for this observance—no direction nor hint in the New Testament for any annual observance of the day of our Lord’s resurrection or of his death or of his birth. There is room for grave questioning whether any such annual

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observance is wise. Devout Christian people are not entirely agreed as to this. Where there is so much room for doubt, and where such honest difference of opinion exists, and where there is no clear instruction in the Bible, Christian brethren should agree to differ in mutual charity. Hoping to be kept in such charity toward all, suffer me to express some thoughts and to give you some cautions on this topic.

It seems to me that laying great stress upon religious observances that are not of divine appointment, but of human invention, is apt to weaken men’s regard, or at least to diminish their carefulness, toward those observances which are of divine appointment. We should be “very jealous” for the holy Sabbath, and not let it find a rival in any (so-called) “holy week,” nor in any annual or other human appointment whatsoever. I caution you in this direction. Be as fervent as you will to-day in remembering and declaring in speech or

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song or floral decoration that “the Lord is risen,” but do not let this use up, or even diminish, the interest with which you will recollect that every first day of the week is “the Lord’s day,” and is to be kept in thankful gladness in remembrance of the great event of the resurrection.

“Welcome, delightful morn

That saw the Lord arise!

Welcome to this reviving heart

And these rejoicing eyes!”

should be your heart’s salutation of every Christian Sabbath, and you should remember that no human Council or Synod or Assembly can make any day or any week “holy,” as God has made the Sabbath.

I also think that laying great stress upon religious observances that are only of human appointment tends to superstition concerning them, and that such observances easily get mixed with ideas or notions that are earthly

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and low. We need to watch them carefully, and carefully to watch ourselves against any such tendency. In the history of this observance of “Easter” there is a good deal that one would like to forget. It would be a great deal pleasanter if it had been called “Pascha” or “Passover-day,” continuing to us the remembrance of that earlier divinely-appointed observance which was fulfilled when “Christ our Passover was sacrificed for us,” instead of being named after a pagan festival that had been kept to Estera, a goddess of the ancient Saxons. I would not press this: I gladly acknowledge that no memory of that pagan goddess is now ordinarily suggested by that name. The pagan associations have dropped away from it as completely, I presume, as from the name “Sunday.” Yet when I see the observance of this day and of the preceding Friday associated with “hot cross-buns” and stained eggs, I cannot help recognizing the tendency of such human tra-

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ditions to degenerate into triviality, if not into superstition. If you will observe Easter, I pray you observe it religiously, devoutly, with Christian dignity, and with no mixing of heathenish levity.

To justify these cautions, and to commend them to your serious thought, I only cite these words of the inspired Paul to the Galatians (4:10, 11): “Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labor in vain.”

After such cautioning, holding every Sabbath-day as truly and scripturally commemorative of our Lord’s resurrection, and yet altogether willing to have my mind and yours specially quickened to this thankful remembrance at this season of the year, I invite you to meditate on our Lord’s resurrection from the dead in its relation to his ascension to the Father: “The third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended into heaven, and sit-

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teth on the right hand of God the Father almighty.”

Rightly and fitly are these two thoughts so closely connected in our Christian Creed. As closely, and as fitly, are they connected in our Christian hymnology and in habitual Christian thought:

“Our Lord is risen from the dead;

Our Jesus is gone up on high.”

He rose from the dead not merely a revivified man, as Lazarus or the young man of Nain, but as the mighty Conqueror of “him who had the power of death, that is, the devil,” abolishing death, triumphing over all powers of evil, soon to ascend and enter in through the heavenly gates, the acknowledged “King of glory.”

Shortly after our Lord came forth from the sepulchre he was met by one of his most attached and devoted disciples. She had come very early to the tomb, had found it empty,

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and had guessed that those having charge of the garden had removed the dead body which she wished to embalm. She soon discovered her mistake and found that he whom, in the dimness of the dawn or blinded by her own tears, she had mistaken for the gardener, was her living Lord himself. She seems to have recognized him by the voice of infinite expressiveness with which he spoke her name, “MARY!”—a name which from his infancy he was wont to hear applied to the mother who bore him, by that grave, just man whom God appointed to be her protector and his. Can you imagine the tone in which he would pronounce that name?

Thus recognizing him, Mary of Magdala, turning toward him, cried, “Rabboni!”—“My Master!”

It is impossible for us to put into a title or an address more of reverent love than from the lips of a Jewish woman that term conveyed. Of Mary’s action or gesture accompany-

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ing her exclamation we are only told that she “turned herself,” as if, before, her face had been averted from him. Perhaps this accounts for her not at once knowing him. What we know of Oriental demonstrativeness, together with our Lord’s words, “Touch me not!” makes it easy to suppose that she was throwing herself at his feet to grasp them in the embrace of humble and fervent love. The Lord restrains her from this. “Touch me not,” he says, “for I am not yet ascended unto the Father, but go unto my brethren, and say to them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and my God and your God.”

You may possibly have wondered at his thus forbidding to Mary so natural a manifestation, whereas a little later he stood in the midst of his disciples and said to them, “Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see, for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.”*

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* Luke 24:39.

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I do not profess to be able to explain all the facts and all the phenomena of our Lord’s life after he left the sepulchre. Certainly some of them do not seem explainable by the laws of ordinary terrestrial life. I modestly suggest, however, that in his appearance to the disciples recorded by Luke there was need of convincing them that he had indeed risen bodily from the dead and was bodily and tangibly present to them—that what they saw was no unreal phantasm, but a true body. In the interview with Mary which John recorded, there was no such need. No such unbelief or doubt was to be overcome in her mind. His tender and emphatic “Mary!” had been sufficient warrant for her believing, affectionate, reverent “Rabboni!” She needed no further demonstration of the fact that her Lord had risen. She was ready for higher instruction as to the import and power of that fact. He would not have her hindered from receiving that higher instruction by giv-

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ing herself up to the gush of earthly, human emotion in which she would cling to his feet and lavish her loving tears and kisses upon them. With no rude or harsh repulsion, but with divine calmness and dignity, he helps her to repress that feminine outburst of emotion, and employs her feminine energy upon a practical errand. He sets her highest powers in action in thinking on the heavenly things to which the resurrection points and leads: “I have not yet ascended to the Father. But I am ascending to the Father of me and Father of you, the God of me and God of you. Go to my brethren and tell them this.” It does not surprise us to see how quickly the grateful Mary fulfilled the errand. “I have seen the Lord”! she eagerly exclaims to the disciples as soon as she has come to them; and then she faithfully delivers his message.

There is in that message valuable instruction which can be realized only by careful attention to some of its words and phrases.

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“I am not yet ascended.” The verb (ἀναβέβηκα) thus translated is in the perfect tense, which denotes a finished action. In the other clause the same verb is used, not in the future tense—“I shall ascend by and by”—but in the present tense (ἀναβαίνω): “I ascend,” or “I am ascending.” “The use of the present” [tense], says Dr. Schaff, “is to be explained by the consideration that the resurrection of our Lord was really the beginning of his ascension. At that point earth ceased to be the Saviour’s home as it had been, and he himself was no longer in it what he had been. Thus it might be said by him, ‘I ascend;’ ‘My ascent is begun, and shall be soon completed: then shall I enter into my glory, and the Spirit shall be bestowed in all his fullness.’”

But how was this a reason for his forbidding Mary to touch him? Upon this I cannot do better than to cite to you the words of Dr. Schaff: “‘Touch me not.’ These

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words do not express the touch of a moment only, but a touch that continues for a time. They are equivalent to ‘Keep not thy touch upon me;’ ‘Handle me not;’ ‘Cling not to me.’ Mary would have held her Lord fast with the grasp of earthly friendship and love. She needed to be taught that the season for such bodily touching of the Word of Life was past. But, as it passed, the disciples were not to be left desolate: the season for another touching—deeper, because spiritual—began. Jesus would return to his Father, and would send forth his Spirit to dwell with his disciples. Then they should see him, hear him, handle him, touch him, in the only way in which he can now be seen and heard and handled and touched. In a true and living faith they shall embrace him with a touch nevermore to be withdrawn or interrupted. Hence the important word ‘brethren.’ Those to whom the message is

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sent are more than disciples: they are brethren of their Lord. His Father is their Father, and his God their God. They are entering upon a state of fellowship with the Father similar to his own; and that fellowship is to be the distinguishing characteristic of their new condition. Thus the message sent by Mary to the brethren of the Lord is not a mere message that he has risen from the grave. The thought of his resurrection is rather embraced only as a part of a new and permanent state of things which has come in.”

These thoughts, expressed by one of the healthiest, happiest, heartiest men of our time, as well as one of the most scholarly and devout, seem to me quite in the spirit of the beloved disciple on whose writing they are a comment—the beloved disciple in whom there was such admirable combination of womanly loveliness and manly energy. The calm, loving, pensive face must not make us

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forget the energy slumbering within, which makes him a “son of thunder.”

There is a further discrimination, referred to by Dr. Schaff, which is made apparent by a close and careful inspection of the words of our Lord which John has here reported. The careful commentator calls our attention to this fact—that Jesus does not say “Our Father,” but “My Father and your Father.” I believe there is no instance in which he is recorded as classing himself with his disciples—as saying, with them, “Our Father.” He gave them that designation with which to address their united prayer to God, but when he stood with them offering up prayer for them he did not so begin his prayer:

“These words spake Jesus, and lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, Father, the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee.” (John 17:1.)

Do not you perceive the difference? Do not you feel it? He cannot take us up upon

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the lofty summit on which he stands, the only-begotten of the Father. There is a difference which we must not forget between his calling God “his own Father” and his teaching us to call him “our Father.” Keeping this in mind will not cause us to lose the delightful impression of his not being ashamed to call us brethren; rather, it will deepen that impression. In immediate connection with expressions which show so clearly the distinction between his filial relation to the Father and that which is vouchsafed to us, he sends a message to his disciples in which he speaks of them as his brothers. As we read it we cannot help remembering how graciously he said, “Whosoever doeth the will of my Father who is in heaven, the same is my brother, and my sister, and mother.”

Do not these words of our Lord to Mary, repressing the natural manifestation of her reverent love—natural, human, womanly, earthly—justify the caution which I gave

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you? In this “Easter” observance is there not a strong tendency to a too sensuous demonstration? Even apart from those trivialities of eggs and biscuits, the fine art invoked to embellish the day is liable to stir aesthetic emotion which may easily be mistaken or substituted for devout emotion. The most thoughtful Christian artists acknowledge this tendency in all application of art to religious subjects, and they earnestly warn us against it. Some of the most thoughtful and serious people think that we are, just in this period, a good deal exposed to a zeal for aestheticism which tends to enfeebling our spiritual and our intellectual energy. It lulls us, soothes us, satisfies us, and most bewitchingly helps us to be satisfied with ourselves.

I do not say this as objecting to all use of art, but as cautioning you to beware of this danger that lurks in all use of it. It certainly is possible to have one’s sensibilities greatly stirred in and by means of artistic mani-

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festations concerning such themes as the death and resurrection of our Lord, while the great truths in those themes have taken no deep hold of our convictions, and are exerting no decisive control over our active energies.

As soon as Mary saw that indeed the Lord was risen her natural and not blamable impulse was to manifest her joy in embracing his feet in a fervor of devout enthusiasm. The Lord repressed that tendency, and gave a better outlet to her fervent emotion in a practical errand in which he employed her energies. He does not forbid nor blame nor discountenance emotion and the natural manifestation of it, as the story of the alabaster box of ointment shows; but he gives little encouragement to the passive enjoyment of emotion, and he exalts far above it the devotion of active energy to his service: “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” He can never be pleased with tears when he calls for material gifts; nor with lavish expression of

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feeling when he is calling for action; nor with our embracing his feet when our own feet should be running on his errands.

But how shall we know when the one or the other is pleasing to him—busy activity or tender emotion? He does not tie us down with any precise rules on this subject, any more than we could make such apportionment by rule between the caresses and the services of domestic love. “Wisdom is profitable to direct” in the one case as in the other, but in both cases this is clear: the neglect of practical services for which there is opportunity toward one to whom we owe love can never be excused on account of never so profuse or graceful expressions of affection.

Do you in your heart believe that the Lord is risen? Do you bring flowers and sing songs? and does your heart throb with special rapture at the recollection on the supposed anniversary day? It is well. But let the question go to your heart: “For what has he

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risen? and to what has he ascended?” “To the right hand of God,” do you say? “To the right hand of the power of God,” remember. It is the Lord who has risen; it is the King who has ascended. In glorious majesty he sits, and sends a royal demand for your service. What you feel toward the risen Lord to-day is mainly important in its relation to what you mean to do for your ascended Lord to-morrow. Think not that you can work for Mammon, for self, until next Easter or until next week’s Lord’s day, and then satisfy him by a gush of emotion at his feet. Keep in mind, all the week and all the year, that “now we no more know Christ after the flesh,” and that, being ascended up on high, he hath shed forth the promised Spirit, and now is, if you will have him, with you in spirit and in power every day and in all the labors to which he calls you, all the experiences which he appoints you.

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Do you remember the last things the Lord spoke before he ascended from Olivet? I pray you, make a study of that ascension-scene. Ask yourselves seriously what more you can do this year than you have done heretofore to fulfill that great commission to make known his gospel of salvation to every creature. Our songs and our tears and our raptures are acceptable to him only when and so far as he sees them to be preparing us for and moving us unto those endeavors for which he gives us opportunity and ability for practically advancing his cause and kingdom in this world. In those practical endeavors, prayerfully and earnestly pursued, not Easter Sunday only, but all the Sundays and all the days of the year, should be vivid with the power of Christ’s resurrection.

Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1334 Chestnut St., Philada.