ty. We only find
safety, comfort, joy, encouragement, as we lie, prostrate in penitence,
before our Redeemer. It is clear, is it not, what we mean by all this?
We are, simply and naturally, to kneel before our Lord, and acknowledge
to Him all our untruth, all our disloyalty, all the manifold failures of
our service. And the very fact that we can do this sincerely and
honestly, is the earnest of all good things to come in us. If only we
can make this genuine and heartfelt confession, there is no degree of
moral recovery beyond our reach.

For on Easter Eve we try to realise once more that greatest of Christian
truths, the _power_ of Christ's Resurrection. The power which was
manifested in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is the power
which is universally present in nature and in mind, which is the reality
behind all forces of nature, which all forces reveal. It has been finely
said, that "the opening of a rose-bud and the Resurrection of Jesus
Christ are facts of the same order, for they are equally manifestations
of the one force which is the motive power of all phenomena."

We see that power in the glories of the opening spring; we are conscious
of it in ourselves, in every good resolve, every upward aspiration. There
comes to us the inspiring thought, that the physical and the moral
Resurrection alike, in nature, in ourselves, in Jesus Christ, are
different manifestations of one and the same power. Was the Resurrection
of the Lord a mighty fact, the greatest of all the facts of history, a
transcendent and astonishing miracle? The power which wrought it is in
me; the same wondrous fact, the same stupendous miracle, if I will, may
be accomplished in me.

That was the very meaning of my Christian calling--that "as Christ was
raised from the dead by the glory of the Father," so I, by the self-same
power, might be raised from the death of sin, and enabled "to walk in
newness of life." The Death, the Burial, and the Resurrection of Jesus
Christ are not merely historical facts, external to me: they are meant to
be spiritual facts in my own experience, in the experience of all
Christians. And spiritual facts are beyond measure greater in value and
meaning and influence than those historical facts which happened in space
and time, in order to serve as signs and symbols of the inward and
eternal realities.

So let us come to our Easter Communion, not only in the spirit of
penitence, but in the spiri