The World's Great Sermons, Volume 02 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 195 pages of information about The World's Great Sermons, Volume 02.

The World's Great Sermons, Volume 02 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 195 pages of information about The World's Great Sermons, Volume 02.

To come then to the business:  I shall endeavor to show that there is no sufficient reason why men should look upon the resurrection of the dead as a thing impossible to God.  “Why should it be thought a thing incredible (that is, impossible) with you, that God should raise the dead?” which question implies in it these three things: 

1.  That it is above the power of nature to raise the dead.

2.  But it is not above the power of God to raise the dead.

3.  That God should be able to do this is by no means incredible to natural reason.

First.  This question implies that it is above the power of nature to raise the dead; and therefore the apostle puts the question very cautiously, “why should it be thought incredible that God should raise the dead?” by which he seems to grant that it is impossible to any natural power to raise the dead; which is granted on all hands.

Secondly.  But this question does plainly imply that it is not above the power of God to do this.  Tho the raising of the dead to life be a thing above the power of nature, yet why should it be thought incredible that God, who is the author of nature, should be able to do this? and indeed the apostle’s putting the question in this manner takes away the main ground of the objection against the resurrection from the impossibility of the thing.  For the main reason why it was looked upon as impossible was, because it was contrary to the course of nature that there should be any return from a perfect privation to a habit, and that a body perfectly dead should be restored to life again:  but for all this no man that believes in a God who made the world, and this natural frame of things, but must think it very reasonable to believe that He can do things far above the power of anything that He hath made.

Thirdly.  This question implies that it is not a thing incredible to natural reason that God should be able to raise the dead.  I do not say that by natural light we can discover that God will raise the dead; for that, depending merely upon the will of God, can no otherwise be certainly known than by divine revelation:  but that God can do this is not at all incredible to natural reason.  And this is sufficiently implied in the question which St. Paul asks, in which he appeals to Festus and Agrippa, neither of them Christians, “why should it be thought a thing incredible with you that God should raise the dead?” And why should he appeal to them concerning the credibility of this matter if it be a thing incredible to natural reason?

That it is not, I shall first endeavor to prove, and then to answer the chief objections against the possibility of it.

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The World's Great Sermons, Volume 02 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.