But the Psalms not only illustrate the Passion of Christ in its mercy and judgment; they also supply words befitting His Resurrection and Triumph. It may be true that there is no clear or continuous line of prophecy in the Old Testament concerning the life after death. But it is at least equally true that the belief is there, grasped in moments of intuition by the saints of Israel, disappearing for a time like a buried river, but coming ever and anon again to the surface. So in the Psalms there are certainly evidences of the undying hope of the faithful that truth and justice must one day {67} visibly triumph, and that man, in proportion as he is true to these things and therefore true to God, Whose nature they are, and true to himself, as made in God's image--man must also be immortal. He will not go down into silence; an endless future opens before him, as yet unfathomed and unknown, but certain. So in the Psalms which the Christian instinct, illuminated by the Spirit of Pentecost, seized upon in its first words of witness (Acts ii. 25-8) as prophetic of Christ, we have the assurance: I have set God always before me: For He is on my right hand, therefore I shall not fall. Wherefore my heart was glad, and my glory rejoiced: My flesh also shall rest in hope. For why? Thou shalt not leave my soul in hell:[2] Neither shalt Thou suffer Thy Holy[3] One to see corruption. (Ps. xvi. 9-11.) {68} And again: As for me, I will behold Thy presence in righteousness: And when I awake up after Thy likeness, I shall be satisfied with it. (Ps. xvii. 16.) So again, in that profoundly spiritual Psalm, the 73rd, the writer turns from the puzzles of the moral order and the misgivings of his own heart, and seeks refuge in the abiding fact of his personal fellowship with God. He finds _there_ the assurance not only that the wicked will pass away "like a dream when one awaketh," but that the righteous is undying: My flesh and my heart faileth: But God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever. Such Psalms as these find their full meaning only in the light of Easter. The Resurrection of Christ was no mere portent or isolated miracle; it was strictly in line with all that man had risen up to in his highest spiritual intuitions in the past. It is true, in a much fuller sense than that of accomplishing a mere prediction, that Christ "rose again, according to the Scriptures." This essential immortality of the righteous, through his union with God, is implied throughout {69} the Easter Psalms, especially in the 118th (part of "the Egyptian Hallel"), words which must have been recited by the Lord and His Apostles at the Passover Supper, in the very imminence of the Passion. The voice of joy and health is in the dwellings of the righteous: ... I shall not die, but live: And declare the works of the Lord.