[Rev. Albert Gonser, in the Bay View Press, Milwaukee, Wisconsin]

Perhaps no question has been asked so persistently by man as the one, "If a man die, shall he live again?" What happens after death? What is the future life like? As the years go on, as old friends, relatives, members of our families pass on into the unknown, these questions grow more acute. We long for a word from those we loved, but their lips are stilled. No wonder that age-old question is pondered again and again!

The only real and satisfying answer that has ever been given us is that of Jesus: "Because I live, ye shall live also." That is the Easter message. It is so dear to our hearts because of the assurance of life after death. Jesus' simple but definite answer fills our hearts with radiant joy, transforms our lives, awakens our lagging spirits, and inspires us to finer and nobler living.

The answer to this question of the human mind also carries with it an implication that we cannot escape. If Christ [Jesus] has made eternal life possible for us through faith in him, then it becomes imperative that we build sincere and worth-while Christian lives in the days that are allotted to us on this earthly sphere. If we are to live not only for a day or a year, but for eternity, then we must build well and solidly.

A shoddy temple of the spirit, built half-heartedly and of cheap material, will never be fit for eternal life. We dare not clutter up our lives with nonessentials and second bests. Only the solid, enduring structure of Christian character, rooted in the Gospel teaching, will be fit to receive the great gift of life eternal.

This fact is well illustrated by a contractor who was building a new sanctuary. Before the actual construction was began, a few small sheds for tools and equipment were built. In the construction of these buildings his workmen were not particularly careful and they were set up hastily. But when it came to the building of the sanctuary that was to serve for years as the temple of God, everything was done differently. Only the most careful procedure was followed, measurements were made accurately and checked again and again, every bit of work was inspected and tested. The entire attitude of the workmen was changed immediately. Why the difference? The sheds were built only for temporary use, but the temple was being built for the use of many generations. If we wish to live for eternity, then let us live a life worthy of eternity!

[Jepson Jepson in the South Moulton Gazette, Devonshire, England]

A group of women were approaching the grave of Jesus on that first Easter morning—their conversation, no doubt, was about the happenings and events of the last few days, when suddenly one said to another, "Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre?" The magnitude of the problem did not deter them. They still went on until, reaching the sepulcher, they found the stone had already been rolled away.

What a similitude of life this is! How varied and numerous are the stones that block our pathway! The mother with home problems; the father with the difficulties of work and business. The young man trying to "get on" in life, the young woman just commencing her new home life—oh, what problems there are to be faced! There are those who have given up: it seemed too hard for them—they couldn't manage to face it all, and so turned back again. Will you, my friends, continue upon the task set before you? Remember God's grace is sufficient, and no doubt when you get face to face with some of life's difficulties you will find God has not failed you—the stone has been rolled away.

[From the Montana Record-Herald, Helena, Montana]

In a world of human turmoil, confusion, and apprehension we arrive at another Eastertide—and the forces of nature combine to testify to the commemoration of the world's greatest miracle and the most sustaining hope of mankind.

The crowning event which we celebrate each Easter had its beginning on a bleak hill, where, three days before, a young man had been crucified because he had spoken in a manner disturbing to the temporal rulers of that day. But from the cross and from the tomb in Palestine came something far different from what was expected by Pilate and the Roman soldiers who obeyed his orders. There came, in the first place, the emergence of the man ... followed by the promise of eternal life, and consequences which have continued through twenty centuries down to our present time.

If today dismayed and defeated men, beaten to earth by adversity and with hearts burdened by grief, rise to shed their mortality and find hope and sustenance in the promise of everlasting life, the explanation is to be found in the sight which greeted the eyes of Mary Magdalene and Peter and John when they ran to the sepulcher.

Cross, tomb, and resurrection—these are humanity's milestones. But on Easter morning it is the last that is most significant, holding as it does the promise of life beyond the tomb. Looking out over the world under the bright light of this festival, we find reason to be fervently thankful for our continued freedom of worship in this country, and we find new and sustaining hope for the future.

[Rev. N. Vance Johnston, in the Courier, Carmel, New York] "Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre?" The question of the women expresses a very human need. In reality, it was more than just the stone of the tomb in which Jesus lay that needed to be removed for them. They themselves were entombed by their grief and their uncertainty about life, now that their friend was gone. ...

But they were to find an answer to their query sooner than they expected. On arriving at the tomb, they found the stone already rolled away. In that experience there must have dawned upon their sorrowing minds the great truth of the resurrection morning: that stone doors are powerless to entomb the conquering spirit of Christ. And with that glad realization came one equally joyous: that through the spirit of Christ, they, too, would find the way to break the bonds of life's imprisoning tombs.

The message of Easter is more than the story of the bodily resurrection of Christ [Jesus], more than the glad news of eternal life. It is the heartening message that we need not be hopelessly imprisoned in life's recurring tombs; but that, through the spirit of Christ living in us, we may find the stones rolled away and our release from their darksome walls assured. ...

Unkindness turns to kindness when Christ lives in our lives. Jesus summed up the whole of life in these words: "Love one another." Though he was the object of much unkindness himself, nevertheless he was able to overcome its powerful clutches by love. Love expresses itself in kindness—kind words, kind actions—and when it is really put into practice, it renders the tomb of unkindness powerless to entomb us.

Is this process too slow for us? Yet what a tremendous difference it would make in this old world if men would learn to speak and act in the spirit of the Nazarene. Our great problems, both individual and social, would soon cease to appear so great and unsolvable.

It is most significant that Easter comes in the springtime of the year. Through the long winter months, nature has been imprisoned in a dark tomb; but with spring comes the opening of the door. ... Easter seems to speak to us this message: "Rejoice! for in the risen Christ you may find the way to break the bonds of life's dark tombs." May that be our Easter experience.

[Canon Wilkinson, in the Evening News, Glasgow, Scotland]

If you had lived in the time of Christ [Jesus] and been in Jerusalem when the astonishing news was first bruited about that the Nazarene who had been done to death in the presence of a vast concourse of spectators was alive and had appeared and spoken to certain of his followers, what would you have said and thought and done?

I am asking you to think of yourself not as a scribe or a Pharisee or one of the elders of the people, but as a plain, everyday citizen of Jerusalem, a very ordinary sort of person, not at all clever or learned in the law, but a genuine product of your race and of your religious environment. ...

You are just an ordinary citizen of Jerusalem two thousand years ago. But when the story of the resurrection was noised abroad you reacted to it in precisely the same way as the cleverest and most unordinary of your fellow citizens. You did not believe it. ...

But the story spread, became more and more circumstantial, definite, insistent. The disciples of Jesus shunned publicity but could not hide their joy ...; their Master was with them again.

Something led you to seek them out—a dangerous thing to do, but the "something," whatever it was, had a compulsive power that overcame your fears. You were one of the five hundred brethren that saw him with their own eyes, one of a still greater multitude that felt the touch of his risen life. And you had no difficulty in understanding how it came about that those simple men, whom in your heart you had despised, came to be filled with a spirit so dynamic that it enabled them to turn the world upside down. Death had been swallowed up in victory. ...

For Easter is the festival of a great certainty. ... It tells us that evil and injustice have not the last word, even in this world.

[Dr. F. J. Seaman, as quoted in the Times, Los Angeles, California]

Easter never had more meaning than now. Its tidings never held more joy. Easter is not merely a signpost pointing backward to a joyful event, but speaks directly to the present and the future.

Easter reveals to men the meaning at the heart of the universe. Man's spirit is eternal; it lives, and has life and adventure beyond the horizons of earthly time. Man's spirit is destined to triumph. It is undefeatable.

A man may be scourged, tortured, starved; he may fail in special goals, but his indomitable spirit lives, reaching ever upward to greater deeds, more sublime victories, and finer achievements.