April 14

And the Earth did quake, and the rocks rent.

Matt. xxvii. 51.

How astonishing was the contrast exhibited at Christ's death between the inanimate and the intelligent creation of God. Men gazed with cruel hardness on the dying Redeemer, and mocked and reviled him in his expiring agonies. The Sun covered himself with sable darkness, and refused to witness the scene of horror and of blood. Men stood unmoved by the groans of the Man of Sorrows. The cold earth and flinty rocks seemed to evince greater sensibility and to reprobate the callousness of the more flinty hearted multitude, for "the earth did quake and the rocks rent." Doubtless this phenomena was designed to indicate the mighty revolutions which the death of Christ should effect. The Jewish system was now to be utterly abolished, the temple was now to have inscribed upon its portals Ichabod—the glory is departed. All the rights and services of that gorgeous and burdensome economy were to pass into utter oblivion. Now too, the whole world was to become the theatre of divine operations. Paganism, in all its horrid diversities of form and iniquity, was to be shaken to its centre, and a religion of holiness and benevolence was to be diffused throughout the habitable earth, and which should make the kingdoms of this world, to become the kingdoms of God, and of his Christ for ever. Might not this prodigy at Christ's death also be intended to denote the efficacy of the Redeemer's grace on the hearts of men, by which the most obstinate and callous, should be made sensitive, and gentle, and affectionate, as that of a little child, and thus be made meet for the kingdom of heaven.

"Hark! how he groans, while nature shakes,

And earth's strong pillars bend,

The Temple's veil in sunder breaks,

And solid marble rends."