'Distinctness and splendour': an Old High sermon for Easter Day
In characteristic Old High fashion, Blomfield here sees our participation in the Easter embodied in prayer, scripture, and sacrament (note this pre-1833 reference to "frequent communion") and in the call to holy living. The scripture references are a reminder of how the Old High tradition robustly and confidently regarded itself as rooted in Holy Scripture. There is a deeply Pauline nature to this emphasis: like the Apostle, the Old High tradition understood the Resurrection as necessarily expressed in ecclesial communion and holy living. In the absence of such witness to and fruit of "distinctness and splendour", the Resurrection is not being confessed.
... the resurrection of our Lord, as recorded by the Evangelists, and as explained and improved by the Apostles, has given a degree of distinctness and splendour to our prospects of the eternal world, which leaves us without excuse, if we continue to live as though we had hope in this life only. Christ is risen, and ascended into heaven; and his church no longer enjoys his bodily presence.
But the faithful Christian, while he looks forward to his participation of that joy, with the lively hope to which he has been begotten by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead; anxiously strengthens his faith and confirms his hope, by all the aids and means vouchsafed to those who are in covenant with God; by deep meditation on the precious promises of his Word; by constant fervent prayer to the Father, through him who died and is risen again; by frequent communion at that holy table, where the Lord is to be found by the faithful until his coming again: 'whom, having not seen, we love; in whom, though now we see him not, yet believing, we rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory'. Christ was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification. We have the promise of being made like to him hereafter, if, being justified by faith in his blood, we strive, by the help of his Holy Spirit, to resemble him here.
No argument can be more conclusive, no motive more touching than this, both to hope and to holiness; 'Beloved, now are we the sons of God; and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know, that when lie shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as fie is. And every man that hath this hope in him, purifieth himself, even as he is pure'.
(The photograph is of St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate, the church in which Blomfield preached this sermon.)
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