Easter Certainty

by Peter J. Henniker Heaton
from The Christian Science Journal, April, 1949

Christ Jesus rose from the tomb. This is no empty story,
remote and far away.
In an actual year on a certain day
Jesus rose from the tomb and spoke in a garden with Mary.

Then he showed himself again
to Peter and James and John,
seafaring sane young men,
not easily put upon,
and to more than five hundred others,
eating and breaking bread,
not a ghost, but flesh and bone.

Once and for all he proved
that Life is stronger than death;
once and for all he proved
that Spirit is master of flesh.
Knowing the utter lie
of material law and rule,
not turning to drugs for aid
nor needing a surgeon’s skill,
he proved that God is the Life of man,
not to be bound by death or pain.

Because Christ Jesus rose, we may speak with men today
here in our own city, perhaps in our own street,
who have seen the eternal Word rise up in power and dispute
the fable of death and force it to let its captives go.

Here in these very pages, turning on, we may read
the verified simply written testimony of those
who have turned from matter to Spirit in their hour of utmost need
and have risen from beds of sickness—because Christ Jesus rose.

“Lo, I am with you alway,” the ascending Saviour said,
“to the world’s end.” As he promised, the Christ is with us still.
And, like the obedient Marys turning from their dead,
we too may turn from our sorrows to be healed by the Christ’s “All hail.”

If any have waited long
for husband or wife or child,
father or mother or friend,
to rise from a sickbed healed
by the power and the spirit of Truth,
they need not doubt, but can know
that it can and it will be so,
as surely as Jesus rose from the tomb
on a spring day long ago.

This article was published in the April 1949 issue of The Christian Science Journal. To learn more about this monthly magazine, published online and in print, visit HERE.