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1. The argument of the text is that the hope of a new life, like Christ's, beyond the grave ought to find its justification in a new life here; that on either side of the grave the life of the spirit is the same.

2. It is commonly supposed that the fact of immortality can only be established by some external evidence such as the resurrection of Christ; but the text refers us to the ultimate proof both of that and of the resurrection of all in whom a life like Christ's dwells. And here the eyewitnesses of Christ's resurrection have no advantage over us, and the unlearned man is on a level with the critic.

3. The peculiarity of man is the blending in him of two kinds of life. There is, first, that the lower animals possess; but in this there is for man no more than the lowest animals. It seeks nothing, sees nothing, and says there is nothing beyond. One who has not first come to the truth of immortality in a higher line of thought can never discover it by any process of physiological explanation. "That which is born of the flesh is flesh." From things that are merely temporal we can never attain to certainty of things eternal. The life of flesh and blood has here all its satisfactions, its goal and end. It is as perishable as the things on which it feeds.

4. But on the stock of this animal life is manifest a bud prophetic of an unfolding which is independent of the material world. What the apostle calls "newness of life" is not merely new, but radically distinct from all other life, and unfolds itself in an opposite way. Search its annals, and you will find them luminous with the names of those who, for the sake of living in a world of higher satisfaction, refused to live in a world of inferior content. From the Good Shepherd giving His life for the sheep to the martyr of Erromanga perishing in his mission to cannibals, we see a moral life developing in a way diametrically opposite to the animal life, declaring itself independent of the material things that are sought by a life which is for this world alone.

5. Will this life, then, survive? The answer must come from the life itself. Life is a conclusive witness to the nature of life, as Jesus said, "Though I bear record of Myself, yet My record is true, for I know whence I came, and whither I go." We accept the witness which the animal life bears to its perishable nature, when we see it shrink instinctively from death as its destruction. We must equally accept the witness of the moral life to its imperishable nature, when we see it instinctively welcome death as its deliverer. What is it, then, that we see in the multitude who in the spirit of Christ have turned their backs on a transitory world in preference for that which they seek as eternal? Evidently a mighty, vital force overmastering the imperious dictates of a lower life. Now is this a delusion, a dream? Look at this newness of life, walking down the ages with the torch of truth and the gifts of love; look at the transcendent inspirations by which it transforms brutish into Christly natures! See now what would follow on the hypothesis of its termination at death, viz., that the self-preserving instinct of the lower life of selfish appetite is trustworthy, but that the self-preserving instinct of the moral life catches at a shadow; that the highest and holiest aspirations of Jesus, and of all who, like Jesus, have sought a higher world through the sacrifice of a lower, have only been a deceitful lure to an utter loss.

6. Our own personal certitude of immortality depends on the development which we give to this newness of life in ourselves. Long ago was this pointed out in Cicero's remark that the presage of a future life takes the deepest root in the most exalted souls. To one, therefore, who seeks to be convinced of his immortality, I would say not "Hear or read this," but "Be this." He who lacks a working belief of his immortality cannot borrow it, but must cultivate it by creating the moral soil in which it grows. The actual resurrection of Christ is something, but that newness of life which is the earnest of the inheritance is better. But let the old life get uppermost, with its selfish desires and gratifications, and the inward witness which the new life bears to an eternal hope will grow faint and mute (Romans 8:13).

(J. M. Whiton, Ph. D.)

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KJV: Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?

WEB: Or don't you know that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?