is His enemy as well as ours. He came to conquer it,
sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed"; and should, when going up to the cross, and down into the grave, say with calm but happy confidence, "Thou wilt show me the path of life, in Thy presence is fulness of joy, at Thy right hand are pleasures for evermore." Most mysterious are such words as these from the lips of Him who is the resurrection and the life; and yet it is just because they come from Him,--from this Prince of Life,--that they are so assuring, so comforting to us. His oneness with us, and our oneness with Him, account for all the mystery. His oneness with us, as our substitute and sinbearer, the endurer of our curse and cross and death, accounts for all that is mysterious in this Psalm. Our oneness with Him clears up all that is wonderful in such words as "I am the resurrection and the life, he that believeth on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." Blessed, thrice-blessed oneness,--mutual oneness; He one with us, we one with Him, in life, in death, in burial, in resurrection, and in glory. Now we can take up His words as truly meant for us, "Thou wilt show us the path of life"; for in believing God's testimony to the Messiahship of Jesus of Nazareth, we have become one with Him!
In all this we have,
1. Messiah's estimate of death. He abhors it. It is His enemy as well as ours. He came to conquer it, to destroy it for ever. He conquers it by being conquered by it; He slays it by allowing Himself to be slain by it. He crucifies it, kills it, buries it for ever. Death is swallowed up in victory. "O death," He says, "I will be thy plague; O grave, I will be thy destruction."
2. Messiah's estimate of resurrection. He longs for it; both on His own account and His people's. It is the consummation of that which He calls life. It is the second life, more glorious than the first; the opposite extreme of being to that which is called "the second death." The Son of God came into the world as the Prince of Life; He came not merely that He might