Let every man and woman count himself immortal. Let him catch the

The words of Phillips Brooks — “Let every man and woman count himself immortal. Let him catch the revelation of Jesus in his resurrection. Let him say not merely, ‘Christ is risen,’ but ‘I shall rise.’” — stand as a radiant call to awaken the sleeping soul. They were born in the pulpit of a man who sought not only to preach faith, but to ignite hope in the human spirit. Brooks, a nineteenth-century clergyman best known for writing the hymn O Little Town of Bethlehem, lived in an age of doubt and industrial upheaval — a time when many questioned the eternal and clung only to the visible. His words are not a cold sermon, but a cry from the heart: to see in Christ’s resurrection not a distant miracle, but the mirror of our own immortality.

To “count oneself immortal” is to remember that man is not dust alone, but divine breath clothed in flesh. Brooks calls us to lift our gaze beyond the shadows of decay and fear, to the eternal fire that burns within. He does not ask us merely to believe in the resurrection as an event of history, but to feel it as a truth of our own being. When he says, “Let him catch the revelation of Jesus in his resurrection,” he speaks of a mystical awakening — the moment when faith ceases to be words and becomes revelation, when the heart realizes that the same power that raised Christ from the tomb lives in every soul that dares to hope.

This vision is as old as creation. The ancients, though they spoke in different tongues, understood that life is a circle — that death is not the end, but a passage. Yet Brooks gives this truth a distinctly Christian clarity: immortality is not mere continuation, but transformation. The resurrection is the promise that love, goodness, and spirit cannot perish. To say, “Christ is risen,” is to witness divine victory; to say, “I shall rise,” is to join that victory — to claim our place in the eternal story of redemption. Brooks thus transforms Easter from a memorial into a personal revelation: not a celebration of something done long ago, but of something happening now, in every believing heart.

Consider the story of John Newton, the slave trader who became the preacher and writer of Amazing Grace. He once lived in moral darkness, indifferent to the suffering of others, but through grace he was reborn. His “resurrection” was not of the body, but of the soul — a rising from the tomb of guilt into the light of mercy. Newton’s transformation echoes Brooks’s teaching: that the resurrection is not only an event of the afterlife, but a living power that lifts men and women out of the death of sin, despair, and spiritual blindness. Every act of forgiveness, every renewal of faith, every moment when hope conquers fear — these are the signs of the eternal “I shall rise.”

Brooks’s call is not merely theological — it is profoundly existential. To count oneself immortal is to live differently. It means to walk through sorrow with courage, to endure injustice without bitterness, to labor for the good knowing that all goodness is eternal. The person who believes in their immortality no longer measures life by its span of years, but by the depth of its love. For what is mortal dies, but what is love endures forever. When one says with conviction, “I shall rise,” they declare that no grave — whether of body, circumstance, or despair — can imprison the spirit that belongs to God.

The imagery of resurrection has guided not only faith, but the resilience of nations and peoples. In times of ruin, civilizations have been reborn from ashes because someone believed in the possibility of rising again. After the Second World War, when cities lay in rubble and hearts were broken, the people of Europe rebuilt — stone by stone, hope by hope. Their labor was the outward expression of Brooks’s truth: that resurrection is not a myth, but a pattern of existence. Humanity rises whenever it believes again, whenever it chooses to create instead of surrender, whenever it whispers in the darkness, “We shall rise.”

The lesson of Brooks’s words is clear: faith is not passive belief, but active rebirth. To live as one who knows they are immortal is to live with purpose, to love without fear, to face death not as an ending, but as a beginning. Each morning becomes a small resurrection; each act of kindness, a proof of eternal life. The one who says, “I shall rise,” already begins to rise — in courage, in compassion, in faith.

Therefore, let every heart remember: resurrection is not confined to Easter morning or sacred scripture. It is written in the pattern of the stars, in the turning of seasons, in the resilience of the human soul. Let no one say merely, “Christ is risen,” as if it were a tale of another; let each soul say with conviction, “I too shall rise” — from fear into faith, from sorrow into joy, from death into everlasting light. For to believe in resurrection is to live already as one who has overcome.