09 — In His Ressurection

Chapter 9 CHRIST GLORIOUS IN HIS RESURRECTION The hostile Jews gloried in the fact that Christ was dead but denied that he had risen. On this question the decision rests, whether Christianity is true or false; " If Christ be not raised, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain." His resurrection is the great miracle which attests the truth of his gospel. If it was never wrought, all previous miracles are left in inextricable perplexity; if consummated, in connection with his subsequent ascension, and the outpouring of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost, it puts the seal of heaven upon the completed series of Christ’s miracles, and gives the world the assurance that his gospel is " no cunningly-devised fable."

Let us, in the first place, advert to the narrative itself which the Evangelists furnish of this great fact. Joseph of Arimathea, and Nicodemus, men of wealth, and distinguished for their character and office, and men of blessed memory, for their tender regard to the lifeless son of Mary, took the body of Jesus, embalmed it, wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in the sepulcher. Centuries before, the prophet Isaiah had said, " And he made his grave with the wicked and with the rich, in his death." These men were among the principal Jews who followed the Saviour to Mount Calvary, though with very different views from those who came to satiate their malignity by the barbarous spectacle. Their object was to be witnesses of the final act in the drama, and to rescue the dead body of the Sufferer from the outrage of his murderers. It must have been a beautiful and affecting sight to have seen these illustrious men, members in the minority of the very council which had condemned Jesus as a disturber of the peace and a blasphemer, thus shielding him from the infamy which awaited him from the ministers of justice, and giving his body honorable burial.

Jesus expired at the ninth hour of the day, or about three hours after noon. The sun was beginning to go down when these men ascended the cross, drew out the nails, loosened the cord that bound the dead body, and carefully lowered it down, as though they were carrying in their hands a treasure too sacred to be committed to the dust. It would seem that this kind service was the result of preconcerted arrangement between them. It is not probable that they expected his resurrection, from the fact that they embalmed the body; nor was this surprising, when we consider the incredulity of his more immediate disciples. It was a " new sepulcher" where they laid him, built for the Son of God, and hewn out of the virgin rock, never polluted by the flesh of fallen man, and where the sinless One slept alone. There was wisdom in this arrangement of divine Providence, both in that his sepulcher was in the solid rock, and could therefore be sufficiently protected; and in that he was entombed alone, and therefore could be more certainly and easily identified, when he rose. The prediction that he would rise was known to his enemies; nor is it any marvel that they adopted those precautionary measures which would detect or prevent imposture. Hence their care in protecting the sepulcher, in sealing the rock that was rolled upon its mouth, and guarding the place by a band of soldiers. God " taketh the wise in their own craftiness," and the very measures which the subtlety of men adopt with the view of defeating the progress of truth, are often turned to good account, and directed to the " furtherance of the gospel." These very precautions against Christ’s resurrection only served to give the evidence of it greater power, and make the fact itself more notorious. The day on which he was laid in the sepulcher passed away. The following night is passed. The next day passed, which was the Jewish Sabbath.

Very early on the morning of the third day, and while it was yet dark, Mary Magdalene visits the sepulcher, and soon after her, at early sunrising, certain other women came also, who had followed Jesus from Galilee. And " they said among themselves, Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulcher: And when they looked, they saw that the stone was rolled away, for it was very great." There had been a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord had descended from heaven, " and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it. His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow; and for fear of him the keepers did shake and become as dead men."

These women saw the sepulcher, but Jesus was not there. " Then Mary Magdalene runneth, and Cometh to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and saith unto them. They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulcher, and we know not where they have laid him." As she and her female companions were wondering at what had taken place, " behold two men stood by them in shining garments." And as they " were afraid and bowed their faces to the earth," these bright messengers said unto them, " "Why seek ye the living among the dead? he is not here, but is risen. Remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee, saying. The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified, and the third day rise again." These perplexed disciples remembered these words, and "entering into the sepulcher, they found not the body of the Lord Jesus; but they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment, and they were affrighted. And he saith unto them. Be not affrighted, for I know that ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He is not here; he is risen, as he said. Come see the place where the Lord lay; and go your way quickly, and tell his disciples and Peter that he is risen from the dead and goeth before you into Galilee. There shall ye see him, as he said unto you, Lo, I have told you! And they departed quickly, for they trembled and were amazed, and fled from the sepulcher with fear and great joy. Neither said they anything to any one but ran to bring the disciples word. And they told these things to the eleven, and to all the rest."

Peter and John, on hearing these things, immediately ran toward the sepulcher John coming first to the cave, did not enter, but stooping down, looked in, and saw the grave-clothes, but not Jesus; while Peter immediately after him, entered into the sepulcher, and also saw the grave-clothes, but neither did he find Jesus. John then entered into the sepulcher with Peter; and though they knew not what had become of Jesus, were satisfied that he was not in the sepulcher The facts they had seen were obvious; but they knew not what conclusion to deduce from them; "for as yet they knew not the Scripture, that he must rise again from the dead." "Then the disciples went away again to their own homes." Such is substantially the narrative of the Evangelists. The question here arises, What had become of the entombed Jesus? Had his body been secretly removed, by the Jews or by his disciples, or had he risen from the dead? That the Jews had taken away his body, it were preposterous to believe, nor was this ever supposed. That his disciples had surreptitiously taken it away, was reported among the Jews; they had bribed the guard at the sepulcher, to originate and give currency to the rumor that his disciples "stole the body while they slept." This artifice of the chief priests is too frail and preposterous. It is not probable that such a body of men as the Roman Guard, would have slept on such a post, and under the penalty of military law; nor, had they slept, is it probable that his disciples could have taken the body of Jesus, without awaking them; nor is it possible, that if they remained unawakened, they could have known and testified that the disciples took it away. Subsequent events also show that the very Jews who fabricated this falsehood, themselves were ashamed of it; for when the apostles were afterward brought before them, instead of accusing them of taking away the body of Christ, they beat and threatened them, without making the least allusion to the allegation of their having removed the body. They contrive every pretext for putting them to death; they calumniate and abuse them, they accuse them of sedition and heresy, and the profanation of the Temple; but they say nothing of this rumor of taking the body from the sepulcher Even their celebrated orator, Tertullus, who was induced to array all his rhetoric, and all the arts of his profession against them, says nothing even of this suspicion although Festus himself testifies that the resurrection of Christ was the subject of discussion between him and Paul. Why did not the Jewish Sanhedrim, when they had seized the apostles and put them in prison, for declaring that "the God of their fathers raised up Jesus whom they slew and hanged on a tree," instead of deferring to the advice of Gamaliel, to refrain from these men and let them alone, at once affirm that his resurrection was a fraud, and that God had no part with impostors? If, then, the body of Christ was not removed from the sepulcher, either by his enemies or his friends, what is the evidence that he rose from the dead? The truth of his resurrection cannot be proved by the fact, that it was seen by men. No eye of man watched over his sepulcher when he rose, unless it were that of the Roman guard, who, according to their own account, were asleep during the whole of this wondrous transaction, and who, according to the narrative of the Evangelists, " for fear of the descending angel, did shake and become as dead men." His disciples were not there; the Jews were not there. The only witnesses who actually saw him rise were the two angels who rolled away the stone from the mouth of the cave, and who appeared to the women early in the morning on which they visited it, and said unto them, " He is not here, but is risen." Habited in garments, like their own resplendent purity, they came from heaven, amid the terrors of an earthquake, to open the gates of death to their sleeping Lord, to be the witnesses of his triumph, and to remain seated upon the rock which they had rolled away long enough to proclaim his resurrection, while the affrighted soldiers recovered from their astonishment, and fled to the chief priests to tell the prodigies they had seen. These holy women were perplexed and sad, when they found the body of Jesus was not in the sepulcher, and probably thought that the Jews had taken it away in order to cast upon it new outrage, and commit it to the same ignominious grave with the two thieves. The two angels made them the first depositories of the tidings, that the Lord had risen, and thus through those holy women who, " Last at the cross, and earliest at his grave," first announced to men that he " who was crucified through weakness liveth by the power of God. When the rest of the company, after having heard the announcement of the angels, had dispersed, one there was who still remained near the sepulcher She could not leave the spot where she had seen the body of her Lord deposited; but took a melancholy pleasure in bedewing it with her tears. There she stood doubting, weeping, agitated by hope and fear; when, turning round, "she saw Jesus himself standing and knew not that it was Jesus." She was too much absorbed in her own thoughts to recognize her Lord; and when he uttered the words, "Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou?" her imagination was still so occupied with what she had just seen, that " supposing him to be the Gardener, she saith to him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away." She made no answer to his questions, because she supposed he could not be ignorant of the cause of her grief, nor of the object of her search; nor was this silence unnatural in her state of mind. Who could doubt, so near his sepulcher, whom she was seeking? She was waiting for an answer to her own request, when Jesus called her by name and with a tenderness of emphasis which she suddenly recognized, said, Mary! She cast herself at his feet and exclaimed, " O my Master! " It was her risen Saviour, her own living Saviour, that she beheld. She sees him who was just crucified and laid in the tomb of Joseph. She hears his voice, and is subdued with joy. She "came and told the disciples, that she had seen the Lord, and that he had spoken these things unto her." After this he appeared to the other woman on their return from the sepulcher into the city; and they constituted a cluster of witnesses. On the same day, he appeared to the two disciples as they were going to Emmaus, and whom he found conversing on the subject of his death. Their hopes that he was the promised Messiah were crushed and buried in his grave. They were giving utterance to their sadness, when Jesus, not at first recognized by them, drew near and went with them. He commenced the conversation with the question, "What manner of communications are these, that ye have one to another, as ye walk and are sad?" He knew their thoughts, and his object was to instruct and comfort them, by first eliciting their own views, and then disclosing himself to them as the risen Saviour. Jerusalem had just been agitated and held in consternation by the tragical event of the crucifixion; multitudes of Jews, not from Judea alone, but from all portions of the earth, had come up to the city; all Israel had seen the great Deliverer lifted up; and the reply they gave to his inquiry was, " Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are come to pass there in these days?" He said unto them, " What things?" The question interested them; and they proceeded to state their views concerning Jesus of Nazareth, the conduct of the Jewish rulers in putting him to death, their own sadness and their vacillating hopes of his resurrection, the vision of angels, and the testimony of the women who had come from the sepulcher In this doubting state of mind, Jesus found them, and rebuked them for their unbelief. " O fools and slow of heart to believe all that the Prophets have spoken!" He then proceeded to instruct them out of their own Prophets in their minute predictions concerning himself; his birth, his lineage, his character, his death, his resurrection, and his eternal kingdom and glory. They listened with wonder and their hearts burned within them; and when they reached the village where they were going, he went in to tarry with them. " And it came to pass as he sat at meat with them, he took bread and blessed it, and brake and gave to them." He sat in their presence; they saw him and heard his voice; " their eyes were opened, and they knew him." Their conviction that he was risen from the dead was perfect; and having produced it, he " vanished out of their sight,"

After this, he appeared to the ten disciples when Thomas was absent; and then to the eleven when Thomas was present, when he upbraided him for his unbelief, and showed him his perforated hands and feet, and his pierced side; and to convince them that it was himself and not a spirit, he conversed with them, and ate and drank with them. After this, he appeared to seven of them at the sea of Tiberias, where he again made himself known to them, ate with them, restored Peter, and intimated to him the severe trials and bitter end to which that Apostle was destined. And after this he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at once. This was in Galilee, where he had spent the greater part of his life, and was well known, and where his person would have been universally recognized. Thus he continued to have intercourse with men for forty days until he ascended to heaven. We know not how often he appeared to them during these forty days, besides the instances recorded; but it is probable they were very many. The seeming deficiency in the witnesses is the fact that there is no recorded instance of his appearing to the Jews, his enemies, and in Jerusalem itself. The time was when my own mind was, I will not say perplexed, but rather wondered at this deficiency. Why were there not other witnesses? Why did not Jesus show himself publicly, present himself in the temple, and stand in person before the Sanhedrin itself, and let them see for themselves that he had risen from the dead? But the wonder has long since passed away. Who should be the witnesses of his resurrection, if not those who were the best qualified? Other witnesses there might have been of very dubious qualifications, and still more dubious character. They were not the men who would have sealed their testimony with their blood. Christianity does not ask the testimony of such men. The resurrection did not need to be propped up by such dubious testimony. Mary’s testimony in the garden is worth more than the testimony of the whole Jewish Sanhedrin. We should be sorry if the great proof of Christ’s resurrection rested upon the testimony of men so imperfectly acquainted with his person; bloody men, too, and men who stood convicted of subornation of perjury on his trial. Besides, if he had gone into the temple and presented himself to the Sanhedrim; the consequence would have been that they would have denied his resurrection. They would probably have refused to identify him; and would have endeavored to perplex the minds of men with the question, whether the man who had thus appeared to them in the Temple, were the same with him who died on Calvary. Divine providence did not mean that such a question, on such testimony, should ever be agitated. Or they would have treated him as they did his apostles, and as they had treated him — crucified him a second time and put him to an open shame. It was too late for this. The days of his humiliation were past. He was never again to be reviled and rejected of men. It was not for want of testimony that they did not believe; the reason lies deeper than this. It was their proud and radical alienation of heart to the lovely character of Christ, and to his doctrine. The man who began his career in a stable and ended it on the cross, they would never acknowledge as their promised and exalted Messiah. Their disdainful rejection of him could not be overcome by testimony. No, they had closed their eyes and hardened their hearts. They had had their day. The harvest was passed. They were given over in judgment to a reprobate mind. His friends were those who saw him, knew him, and were best qualified to be the witnesses of his resurrection. When he was about to leave the earth, he committed these great facts to their keeping, and said to them, " Ye are my witnesses of these things!

We may now advert to the interest and glory of this great event. The first thought which here impresses us is the completeness of the evidence by which it is established. It is evidence, throughout, which makes its appeal to the popular mind, and is addressed to ordinary readers and unlettered men. Men need but fair and honest minds in order to appreciate it. Let any man take these sacred records and read them, and he cannot fail to perceive there is an honesty of statement, and a sincerity of purpose in the narrators which bespeak them as true men. We have already shown that they could neither have been deceived, nor were they deceivers, in what we have said in regard to their competency and credibility on the subject of Christ’s miracles. We speak now of their testimony itself to his resurrection; read it; compare their different narratives, and though some facts are related by one, and some by another; and though they sometimes relate the same facts differently, they are the same facts. The unrestricted and unembarrassed freedom of their statements is among the vouchers of their honesty. They were not studied, literary compositions; human polish would have spoiled them. Their simple object was to make a faithful record of the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth; and they have done it with the simplicity which is in keeping with their object. There is a straightforwardness in their narrative which no impostor could have attained, and touches of nature in it which are above the power of fabrication.

Take, for example, the single circumstance, that the first witnesses of this great fact, on which Christianity rests, were women. Would a deceiver have selected such testimony? Credulous, trembling women to be the first depositories of an event, amid events where stouter hearts might have quaked with fear! Would an impostor have painted the scene in the garden between Mary and her unrecognized, and then discovered Lord? Was this the fancy of an impostor, or a scene from actual life? Is there a chapter in Tacitus, or Pliny, or Suetonius, or any Roman historian, giving an account of men and events at the same period of the world in which Jesus lived and died and rose again, that is worthy of such confidence as the simple memoranda of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? It is a glorious fact, therefore, that " the Lord is risen indeed!" The witnesses themselves at first could scarcely believe their own senses. When the fact was first testified to the apostles, we are told that " these words seemed to them as idle tales, and they believed them not." One of them resisted the testimony to the last, and would not believe until he had seen and heard; until he had handled the crucified body, and even opened the scarcely-healed wounds in his feet and hands and side. Nor is it any matter of regret that Christianity had then, and now has the advantage of their caution; for it went forth more boldly as they went more boldly and assured; and though poverty, ignominy, dungeons, and death were their reward, their testimony was destined to subdue the world. Rome fell before it, who was not to be subdued by artifice and imposture. Millions have lived and died by it, who would not have trusted in falsehood. And millions have died for it who were not the sport of delusion. The tomb of Jesus, instead of burying the hopes of men, had scarcely covered up the seed before it shot forth, and its branches of righteousness and hope were themselves covering every land.

Christ is risen, and therefore our preaching is not vain, nor is your faith vain. These truths, these promises, this perfected redemption, have a seal fixed upon them, more sure than the seal upon his sepulcher, and are guarded by those heavenly Watchers, whose eye never slumbers, and whose arm is never weary. In raising Jesus from the dead, God has given him power over all flesh, and full authority to accomplish all the purposes of his grace. He was slain, and hath redeemed us unto God by his blood. Our second thought is, that the resurrection of Christ is a glorious reality, for the assurance it furnishes his followers of their own resurrection to eternal life. The doctrine of a future state is clearly revealed in the Law and the Prophets; it is revealed with progressive clearness; it was believed by the Jews, and this popular belief constituted one of the preparatives for the introduction of the gospel. It is a different question, whether the Old Testament reveals the doctrine of the resurrection of the body and whether all those passages which speak of the future blessedness of the righteous, and the future misery of the wicked, may not receive a true and fair construction in limiting their future existence merely to the undying spirit. We would not be over-confident in our conclusion that they require a different and less limited construction, in opposition to the expressed views of men of great learning and excellence. Yet must we deliberately affirm that to us it appears, that when the Psalmist speaks of " his flesh resting in hope," of " waking in God’s likeness," and of God’s " redeeming his soul from the power of the grave;" — when the prophet Isaiah speaks of " death as swallowed up in victory," and when we weigh well the interpretation which the apostle Paul gives to these words;— when we hear the prophet Daniel affirming " that many of them that sleep in the dust shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt;" — when we hear Job declare, " For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth, and though after my skin is consumed, and worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God, whom I shall see for myself and mine eye shall behold, and not another;" no doubt remains upon our own minds, that the great doctrine, not only of a future state, but of the resurrection of the body, is contained in the Old Testament Scripture.

It is quite obvious, however, that the full disclosure of this truth is reserved for the New Testament dispensation, and that the great proof of it is found in the resurrection of Christ. All doubt and perplexity on this subject are dispelled, when we hear the apostle say, " Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you, that there is no resurrection of the dead: but if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is not Christ risen. But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man also came the resurrection of the dead; for as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." It is a wonderful truth that these bodies, after having been reduced to dust, buried in the ocean, or scattered by the wind, or devoured by beasts of prey, or burnt to ashes, shall be restored; but it is not more marvellous than true, and not less true than that Christ rose. Christ is " the first fruits of them that slept." Not the first fruits in the sense that he was the first instance and example of resurrection, because others had risen before, and he himself had exercised his miraculous power in raising them from the dead. But they were not the matured fruits, though first gathered, nor the true samples and specimens of what the resurrection should be. They returned to dwell again among the dead; he rose to die no more, to live and reign; this is the resurrection of which his is the first collected fruits, the first offered to God, as the earnest and pledge of the final harvest. In the narrative of his death, we are told, that when the veil of the Temple was rent, and the earth quaked, that the graves were also " opened, and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of their graves after his resurrection, and went into the Holy City, and appeared unto many." When he rose, he raised up them also, in honor of his own triumph over death and the grave, and as proof to the world that he had risen, and that there shall be at last a resurrection of the dead. " The grave hath enlarged herself and opened her mouth without measure, and all nations have descended into it;" the earth itself will at last become like one vast grave-yard; but they shall "come forth."

How perfect the resemblance between the resurgent body, and the body which existed on the earth, we are not informed. It will be sufficiently so as to be identified with it; yet will it be more beautiful and lovely, because it will be spiritual, immortal, and " fashioned like unto Christ’s glorious body." The early Christians rejoiced in this glorious prospect; nor could the cross, nor the stake, nor the cruelest death their enemies could inflict, suppress the joy. They did not fear to suffer nor to die, because they had been " begotten to such living hopes by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." Our third and last thought is, that the resurrection of Christ is glorious for the full and complete introduction it furnishes of the gospel dispensation. The Saviour instructed the Jews, that though there had not been born of women a greater than John the Baptist, yet " he that is least in the kingdom of heaven, is greater than he." John belonged to the old and worn-out economy. The gospel dispensation had not commenced; great as John was, the meanest prophet under the gospel dispensation was greater. The gospel dispensation did not begin with the coming of Christ; Christ himself was subject to all the Jewish ordinances. It did not begin with his preaching, nor with his miracles; he was then in the form of a servant. It did not begin with his death, nor while he lay in the sepulcher; these were the days of his deepest degradation, and in which his disciples were clothed with sackcloth. It was not until the morning on which he rose, that the glimmering twilight of Judaism passed away, the night vanished, and was followed by the day in which the sun shall no more go down, neither the moon withdraw itself. The resurrection of Christ is the marked period in the history of the world, the brightest period, the most joyous period. He must continue under the power of death for a time, before he could be recognized as the authoritative Founder of the New Dispensation, as the Author and Finisher of the Christian faith, as the announced and honored Captain of his people’s salvation. He was a mortal man till then; after this, "death had no more dominion over him." Till then, he was Heaven’s Messenger, sent to woo and win his church in accents of sadness, and in groans and death; after this, he became her joyful Bridegroom, decked with robes of salvation, and clothed with light as with a garment. Till then, he came not to be ministered unto, but to minister; after this, he was Lord both of the dead and the living, the Head of his church, the King of the universe. The sacred and joyful day of his resurrection, ushered in the year of jubilee to the impoverished and enslaved families of the earth; it was the Sabbath of the world. The glory of the resurrection eclipses, I will not say the shame, but the glory of the cross. What is earth, and the glory of all its kingdoms, to the glory of this risen Saviour? This is he who rose, that all nations might bow before him; that he might sway the sceptre of the world; and having extended his kingdom from sea to sea, set upon the throne of David forever. This high vantage-ground the Christian dispensation occupies. This was the stand-point of the apostles when they went forth " preaching Jesus and the resurrection," and repentance and forgiveness of sins to all nations in his name. Was it not a glorious event? We look back upon these scenes of mourning, and repeat the question he put to the two disciples on their way to Emmaus, " Ought not Christ to have suffered these things and enter into his glory?" On this eminence, the ministry of reconciliation now stand when they speak and teach in the name of Jesus. The cross is victorious, only because he could not be holden by the chains of death. His resurrection holds this prominent place, because it is God’s mark of approbation of the perfection of his character and work. If his death was an expiation for sin, his resurrection is the great proof of its sufficiency, and of God’s acceptance of it in behalf of sinners. The Scriptures give emphasis to the fact, that " he died for our sins, and rose again for our justification." " The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, that if thou dost confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved."

"The stone which the builders rejected is become the head of the corner; this’ is the Lord’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes. This is the day the Lord hath made; we will rejoice in it, and be glad." Every returning Sabbath bears this witness for the Son of Man. It brings before the world this seal of his completed atonement. "Though made of the seed of David according to flesh, he is declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of Holiness, by his resurrection from the dead."

Such is the narrative given us of the resurrection of Christ; such the testimony by which it is supported; and such is the glory of his resurrection itself.

We place ourselves by the tomb of the risen Saviour as dying men. It is a dark world we inhabit, where sorrow and pain, infirmity, sickness, and death are man’s inheritance. " Man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble." The glittering show of earth and all its pageantry vanish, when "his confidence is rooted out of his tabernacle, and he is brought to the king of terrors." It is a dismaying truth that these bodies will putrefy and be dissolved in the dark grave. "Man dieth and wasteth away; yea man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?" The cold, damp sepulcher is a solitary dwelling, and an untried state of being. " As the cloud is consumed and vanisheth away, so he that goeth down to the grave shall come up no more. As the waters "fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up, so man lieth down and riseth not; till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, neither be raised out of their sleep." These are sad reflections, and they come from a far distant and dark dispensation. There is a brighter view of the grave than this. It is not the deep ocean where the hopes of man are buried; but the garden of hope, and where the seed dies only to spring up again, and bloom with the returning year of a pledged immortality. Long ago the blow was struck that weakens the power of death, extracts his sting, and is destined to break up his empire. When the Son of Mary assumed our nature, it was " that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death." When he rose on the morning of the third day, he publicly announced the purpose, " I will ransom them from the power of the grave; O death! I will be thy plague; O grave! I will be thy destruction." Glorious triumph! and still more glorious Conqueror! Cease then these gloomy and agitating fears of death and the grave. Anticipate, if you will, the bold and sudden knock of the Destroyer at this earthly house of your tabernacle. Or mark the gradual invasions of disease under which it is wasting away. Or inspect the wrinkles which time has traced upon your brow, and count the gray hairs which admonish you that the elasticity of youth and the vigor of manhood are gone, and that you may look in vain for withered sprightliness and faded beauty. And bid them welcome. Hail them all as God’s appointed and your own bright omens of unfading vigor and immortal manhood; as the ripening seeds of the coming and promised harvest, " sown in corruption, but raised in incorruption; sown in dishonor but raised in glory; sown in weakness, but raised in power." He who was dead, liveth, and is alive for evermore, and hath the keys of death and the grave. " If we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall he also in the likeness of his resurrection."

We place ourselves also by the side of the Saviour’s tomb also, as mourners. We have a quarrel with the all-devouring grave. It has swallowed up those we have loved. The venerated are there. There sleep smiling infancy, and prattling childhood. There moulder beauty’s form and manhood’s promise. The parents’ hope lies buried there, and the husband’s pride, and the wife’s own refuge and comforter. And there the living sigh and mourners tread softly, and many a bosom gives utterance to the thought, O cruel grave! But have they all forgotten, that there Jesus slept Have they never learned, that " since Jesus died and rose again, so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him?" When now from his high abode he looks down upon these dreary ages of time, and marks the desolations which death has made, and the hopes which the grave has swallowed up; does he not remind them of his own protest against this all voracious destroyer! Is it not over this vast cemetery that he uttered the promise, " Thy dead men shall live; together with my dead body shall they arise." Is not the command still imperative, " Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust, for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead!" Bright rays even now fall upon the mansions of the dead. He will not be slack concerning the promise, that " the hour is coming in the which all that are in their graves shall hear the voice of the Son of Man, and shall come forth." The days are few before the light of that immortal morning shall dawn, and these vile bodies shall be no longer the food of worms, but shall be fashioned like unto his own glorious body.

We place ourselves also by the tomb of the risen Saviour, as the ministers of his gospel. We bring you a message from the sepulcher where there is nothing now but the napkin that was about his head, and the linen clothes that formed his shroud. We show the proof that he is the promised Messiah, and the Saviour of the world. We give you his own assurance, that, having thus struggled with the powers of darkness on the cross, and gone through the gates of death and grave, and thus accomplished the most arduous parts of the work he came to accomplish, he lives to perfect it, and that not one iota of it shall remain unaccomplished. Jesus and the resurrection is the gospel we proclaim. He is not on the cross now; nor do your sins wring with anguish his tortured soul. Nor is every human hope now buried in the caverned rock, guarded by Caesar’s soldiery, and watched by hovering angels. On that memorable morning, he bid adieu to earth’s sorrows and ignominy, and now fills a throne where heaven does him homage, and where it is heaven, and will be heaven to you thus to honor him. "Awake then, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light." This is our message from his sepulcher; and " he that hath ears to hear, let him hear." This is His message; and " see that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not they escape who refuse him that speaketh from heaven."