impressions have they left? Alas! I fear, we mourned in Lent as children do, not knowing why, but weeping just because the Church, our Mother, wept. Our Easter joy, I fear, is woefully conventional, inspired perhaps by the genial breath of spring, or the consciousness that fasting and sackcloth have given way to feasting and the respectability of brand-new clothes, Easter rejoicings, my Brethren, should be more thoughtful, more rational. They should be founded on the deep-laid truths that lie beneath it all, and on the vast field of possibilities the Resurrection opens up to Christians. " For," says St. Paul, " if Christ be risen from the dead, therefore we also shall rise again; therefore we are true witnesses of God; therefore our preaching is true and our faith divine; therefore the penitent's sins are forgiven; therefore they who have died in the Lord have not perished; therefore we shall all rise again in the resurrection at the last day."
Brethren, Christ's Resurrection is the fundamental truth of Christianity. Prove to me that Christ arose not, and in a moment I am an infidel; prove to me that Christ arose, and in that instant I conceive a faith broad enough to accept all the teachings of Christ and Christ's Church; a hope that stops not short of everlasting life for my soul and for my body too, and a charity for God and my fellowman which, God willing, will procure me a happy and a blessed immortality. For if Christ rose again, then beyond all peradventure, He was God, and every word He uttered and every truth taught by the one true
