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4

CHRIST'S GLORIOUS resur

RECTION.

I. ATTENDANT CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE RESURRECTION MORN.

Discomfiture of the imperial watch and the rolling away of the stone.

[13589] The solemn awful hours of that Saturday creep on. Morning dies into evening, and the Roman guard, spear in hand, are still pacing before the sepulchre watching the imperial seal. . . . Evening dies into midnight, and the Roman guard, spear in hand, are still pacing, watching the imperial seal. The solemn awful hours creep on. Midnight begins to retreat before the advancing day, and the Roman guard, spear in hand, are still pacing, watching the imperial seal. O God of heaven! was there

ever such a watch as that?

And now as it begins to dawn toward the first day of the week, while it is yet dark, lo! there is a great earthquake. And, lo! an angel of the Lord, with appearance like lightning and raiment white as snow, descends from heaven, and, rolling away the stone, sits upon it. And, lo! the Roman guard, aghast at Cæsar's broken seal, shake with terror, their nerveless hands unable to grasp their spears, their bodies prone on the ground as the bodies of the dead. "Why these amazing prodigies? Why this trembling ground, this descending and dazzling angel, this rolling stone, this paralyzed guard? Ah! the Roman guard and Cæsar's seal and the rocky walls of Joseph's tomb are not stout enough to hold imprisoned Him who is the Lord of life and King of glory. True, no mortal saw Him in the act of rising. It was God's favourite way of doing His choicest, divinest things. Meet was it that the resurrection of His Son should take place in the majestic solemnity of an august solitude. But, although no one saw Him rise, or can tell the precise moment that He rose, there is one blessed thing that we do know. Some time during Saturday night the dead Jesus became the risen Christ, stepping forth from His tomb the conqueror of sin and death and hell.-Epiphanies of the Risen Lord.

2

Visit of the women, followed by that of the two apostles, to the sepulchre, and the subsequent appearance there of Christ to Mary Magdalene.

[13590] Mary was one of the latest at the sepulchre on the evening of the burial, and now is one of the earliest at that sepulchre on the morning of the resurrection. Perhaps, more eager than the rest, she had hurried on before, and entered the garden alone. A quick glance, that waited not to catch even the sight of the angel's form, had shown her that the entrance was open, and the sepulchre empty. Overwhelmed with sorrow at the sight, and leaping at once to the conclusion that hostile hands had rifled the sacred tomb, Mary hurries back to the city. She seeks the house to which John had carried the mother of our Lord, and finds there both Peter and John. Apprised of her alarming tidings, they arise to run out together to the sepulchre. John's lighter footstep, quickened by his more ardent, more unburdened love, carries him soonest to the spot; but, at the entrance, his deep and reverential spirit holds him back in awe. Peter, of slower step, and still labouring, it may have been, under the burden of self-reproach, is behind John in the race; but, bolder or more impetuous, he stops not at the door, but, passing John, goes at once into the sepulchre. He draws his brother apostle after him, the one never dreaming of the influence he thus exerts, the other as little thinking of the influence he obeys. There the linen clothes are lying, with which Joseph and Nicodemus had swathed the body, and there, not loosely flung upon them in a disordered heap, but carefully folded up in a place by itself, lies that napkin which Mary herself may have helped to bind around the thorn-marked brow. Who had arranged them thus? Was it the hand of the great Sleeper Himself, on His awakening within the tomb? or was it some angel's hand that took the death garments, as they dropped from around the risen one, and thus disposed them? Whoever did it, there had been no haste; all had been done calmly, collectedly. Neither earthly friends nor earthly foes had done it: the one would not have stripped the garments from the body; the other would have been at no pains so carefully to

13590-13595]

arrange and deposit them.-Rev. Wm. Hanna, D.D.

[13591] Peter, looking, is amazed, but his amazement shapes itself into no connected thought as he departs. John's quieter and deeper reflection suggests at once the idea that what has taken place is not a removal, but a reanimation of the body. An incipient faith in the resurrection forms within his breast. That rising faith, John kept to himself; he never boasted that he was the first of all the twelve to believe in the resurrection. Perhaps his first public mention of the fact was when, so many years afterwards, he sat down to write that Gospel which bears his name.-Ibid.

[13592] The brief inspection of the empty sepulchre over, John and Peter return silent and sad to their own home. Mary Magdalene had followed them, as best she could, in the running out to the sepulchre; but she does not join them in their return. Two evenings before she had clung to the tomb to the last, and this morning she clings to it still. The Master whom she had lost had rendered her the greatest of services; had been to her the Kindest and best of friends. Mary Magdalene, standing alone weeping thus before the empty sepulchre, presents herself to our eye as the saddest and most inconsolable of all the mourners for the Crucified. Did you ever read of a more absorbing grief than that she, who was presently addressed by angels, should have no surprise, no astonishment to spare; but, as if unheeding who they were that spoke to her, should, out of the depths of her engrossing sorrow, only be able to repeat what she had said to Peter and John, varying the phrase a littleclaiming a closer property in the departed

66

Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him"? And she turns away, even from an interview with angels, to weep out without further interruption her most bitter grief.-Ibid.

66

[13593] But now, from other lips, the same question, "Woman, why weepest thou?" salutes her ear. She sees, but scarcely notices, the person who thus speaks to her. Taking him to be one who did not need to be told why she wept, who must know all about what had happened the gardener of the place-she says to him, in the simplest, most artless way, Sir, if tho have borne Him hence, tell me where thou hast laid Him, and I will take Him away." She is willing even to believe that it was with no unkindly purpose He had been removed. Only let her know where He is; and, all forgetful how unfit her weak hands were for such a task, she says—I will take Him away. "If it be an offence that He lies here in this rich man's tomb, so near the holy city, I will bear Him away to some remoter burial-place, where He may lie in peace, and where I may go and weep at will over His grave.” Jesus saith unto her, “Mary." The old familiar voice! It can be only He who

[CHRIST'S GLORIOUS RESURRECTION.

names her so. Instantly, fully, the revelation of His living presence bursts upon her. She turns, and forgetting all about the new strange circumstances in which she sees Him, as if the former days of their familiar intercourse had returned, she says, Rabboni! and is about to clasp Him. Jesus stops the movement. Touch Me not," He says, "for I am not yet ascended to My Father; but go to My brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto My Father, and your Father; and to My God, and your God."Ibid.

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[13594] "Fervently," says St. Chrysostom, "did she speak, and lovingly." He thinks with Athanasius, that on speaking, as she supposed, to the gardener, she was again turned to the angels, as if to inquire the cause why they were so amazed. And of her saying, "If thou hast borne Him hence," without mentioning His name, St. Gregory well observes, "The force of love has usually this effect in the mind, that it supposes that he whom itself is always thinking of, no one else can be ignorant of." It is, indeed, as Job says, "Oh that I knew where I might find Him, that I might come even to His seat!" yet without mentioning of whom he speaks. "Jesus saith unto her, Mary!" "It was," says St. Cyril, "as if He would reprove the slowness of her faith." But in fact it was that most gracious designation, "I have called thee by thy name, thou art Mine!" calleth His own sheep by name, and they hear and know His voice. Her own name, and that of import so high, and spoken in accents so well known, brought suddenly to her mind, as with a sudden rush of thought, the unexpected, but full assurance of her Master's presence, so that she could not address Him, but in breathless adoration called Him, Master; and in awful, but silent worship, according to the custom of reverential prostration, so often spoken of among the ancients, embraced His sacred feet, "She turned and said unto Him, Rabboni! which is, being interpreted, Master." Blessed, indeed, was this favoured and weeping mourner, first to behold, first to acknowledge, first to be spoken to by name, and to converse with "the First Begotten from the dead.”—Rev. Isaac Williams, B.D.

He

[13595] As this is the first appearance of our Lord, so may His words to Mary Magdalene be considered as the first authoritative declaration of redemption completed. And as the fall had been first by a woman, so to a woman, and to one that had experienced sevenfold the worst effects of that fall, out of whom had gone seven devils," is the announcement made; and by her mouth is first declared; by her first it is conveyed to the apostles, as by them to the world. To the first woman it was said, "Touch not, lest ye die : " but to Mary, "Touch not yet," for human nature is not yet exalted to the right hand of God: but wait yet a few days, and you may freely touch, and eat, and live, and never die. Go thou, therefore, woman as thou art,

13595-13600]

and tell it unto My brethren: "Touch Me not; for I am not yet ascended to My Father: but go to My brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto My Father, and your Father; and to My God, and your God." St. Augustine's remark is important, that " He does not say our Father, but My Father, and your Father. In one sense, therefore, My Father, and in another yours; by nature Mine, by grace yours. Nor did He say our God, but My God, under whom I am as Man; and your God, between whom and Himself I am the Mediator." And St. Chrysostom, "This refers to the economy of His Incarnation, for ascending is spoken of the flesh. In one sense is He His Father, and in another sense is He ours, certainly altogether so; for if He is the God of the just in a different sense to what He is of other men, much more so of His Son and of us."—Ibid.

I

II. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE EFFECTS PRODUCED BY THE RESURRECTION ON THE CHARACTER OF THE APOSTLES.

It transformed their hereditary faith, and inspired them with new thoughts, ener. gies, and hopes.

[13596] If we compare the portraiture of the apostles as given in St. Luke's Gospel with that in his book of the Acts, we cannot but feel that we are looking on the same men, but transfigured in the latter case by the working of some mighty influence. There are the old traits of individuality, but they are ennobled. The relation in which the disciples stand to their Lord is not less personal, but it is less material. He is regarded as their Saviour as well as their Teacher. What was before vague and undecided is defined and organized. Those who when Christ was yet with them wavered in spite of their love for Him, mistook His words, misunderstood His purpose, forsook Him at His Passion, after a brief interval court danger in the service of a Master no longer present, proclaim with unfaltering zeal a message hitherto unheard, built up a society in faith on His name, extend to Samaritans and Gentiles the blessings which were promised to the people of God. However we explain it the change is complete and certain. Their whole moral nature was transformed. As far as we can see there was no spring of hope within them which could have had such an issue. The anticipations which they shared with their countrymen, and those which the immediate presence of Christ had awakened, were dissipated by His death. Whatever new impulse moved and animated them must have been from without, clear, and powerful. It must have been clear, to make itself felt to men who were in no way predisposed to yield to it powerful, to remould once and for ever their notions of the work of Messiah. The resurrection satisfies both conditions. - Prof. Westcott, D.D.

[13597] If the crucified Lord did rise again, we can point to effects which answer completely

[CHRIST'S GLORIOUS RESURRECTION.

to what we may suppose to have been the working of the stupendous miracle on those who were the first witnesses of it: if He did not, to what must we look for an explanation of phenomena for which the resurrection is no more than an adequate cause ?—Ibid.

[13598] The death of Christ annihilated at a stroke the Messianic expectations of the apostles. Their dejection was complete. But if, of all that they had hoped, nothing was ever realized, this dejection could not have passed away. There must be some intermediate historical fact to explain the transition; something must have occurred to revive, with new power, the almost effaced impression; to bring back the flow of their faith which had so far ebbed away. The reappearance, then, of Christ among His disciples is a connecting link in the chain of events which cannot possibly be sparedNeander.

I

III. ITS MANIFESTATIONS.

The resurrection of Christ is the great public display of His authority over the power of physical decay and death, and of victory over sin.

[13599] All others, in whatsoever age of the world, had been raised by a power from without, He alone by Himself. The power that revived all stands self-revived. This is indeed to "quicken whom He will;" this is indeed to "have life in Himself." But the case is even more pre-eminent in another view. In all other instances death had but touched the verge of God's real empire, and been at His pleasure repelled; here the rebel had stormed the citadel, and planted his dark standard in its inmost hold. That which is the very principle of vitality to the whole world had seemed to wither in His grasp upon the cross; when majestically rose the unvanquished Lord of life, and hurled him back and for ever to darkness. The resurrection of the dust of a thousand ages to the judgment, wondrous as it shall be, cannot approach to this. The dead who then shall live, shall live by a power exerted in all the fulness of visible and irresistible authority; it will be but the act of a known and recognized Creator, not perhaps as truly wonderful as a thousand natural processes that surround us every hour. But the dead Christ, who lived again, was prostrate under His enemy the hour He overwhelmed him; the conqueror was chained and bleeding beneath the foe He destroyed. As a man truly dead, He was inextinguishably alive as God.Rev. Wm. Archer Butler, M.A.

[13600] If sin brought on man all those horrors which are concentrated in a human death, understood fully in all the possibilities of what it leads to-if, for thousands of souls, on account of sin, the first death is the prelude to death eternalwe do need the assurance that a man-the Man -the Son of Man-the representative of human nature—has so brought God and man together,

13600-13606]

in His united Divine and human nature, that sin, as such, as well as mere outward death, is vanquished. Had Christ's death ended His history, where was the proof to us that He was victorious over sin, the cause of death? If we change the word from sin to the devil, the whole is clear. The devil stirred His enemies to slay Him. His death seemed to show that He fell under the devil's power, like any sinful son of Adam. But, rising, He proclaimed the downfall of the devil's empire, and that He was able and willing to rescue man from the devil's tyranny.-Abp. Tait.

IV. ITS POWER.

Its realizing power.

(1) Belief in the resurrection inspires man with the perception of God's moral government.

[13601] The power of Christ's 'resurrection may be observed, first and generally, in the way in which belief in it enables a man to realize habitually the moral government of the world by God. Our age has many characteristics which nobly distinguish it from earlier times, but it is not an age in which men would believe, as they believed in the past, that whatever happened was overruled by a being who is perfectly good and perfectly wise. Now here the certainty that Jesus Christ rose from the dead asserted what St. Paul called its power. For when Jesus Christ was crucified it might have seemed-it did seem-that the sun of God's justice had gone down behind thick clouds, and that moral darkness had settled upon the earth. It might have seemed-it did seem-that while the vices were being feasted and crowned in Rome, all the virtues could be crucified, and crucified with impunity, in Jerusalem. It might have seemed that nothing was at a greater discount than moral beauty. But when He burst forth from the grave in which they had laid Him under the seal and stone, He proclaimed to men's senses, as well as to their consciences, that the real law which governed the world was moral, and not material, and that the sun of God's righteousness, if it were at times overclouded in human history, was sure to reappear. To know that Jesus Christ rose from the dead was to know that, whatever might be the perplexities of the moment or of the age, the world was really governed by God's most holy, overruling providence.-Canon Liddon.

(1) In the appeal of this truth to the mind, it emphatically endorses the perfect verity of the Christian faith.

[13602] The power of the resurrection of Christ is seen in the firm persuasion which it creates in our own days, as in the days of the apostles, that the Christian creed is true-true as a whole, true in its several constituent parts. And thus the resurrection of Christ has a twofold aspect. It is at once a truth of the Christian creed, and it is a proof that the Christian creed is true.-Ibid.

[CHRIST'S GLORIOUS BESURRECTION.

[13603] The resurrection of Christ is the certificate of our Lord's mission from heaven, to which He Himself pointed as a warrant of His claims.-Ibid.

3 Its spiritual and moral power.

(1) As witnessed to in the Christian's life. [13604] A new power has entered into human life, the vast power of sincere belief in a future world. In the presence of Christ's resurrection every true Christian feels that this life is an insignificant preface to the rest, that it is merely the shadow which precedes the substance, but upon which the attainment of the substance depends, that the longest life is a mere halt upon the brink of the eternal world-that world of awful, unchangeable realities. Here, I say, where a man has a sincere belief there is a tremendous power, a power which can invigorate the will, and purify affection, and check the fire of passion, and quicken into life the languor of despair -a power which elevates the whole aim and scope of life, which forbids petty aims and indulgences, and bids each one of us, in success and in failure, in great things and in small, in private and in public, ever to forget the present in the future, to remember "what is the hope of our calling, and what the riches of the glory of our inheritance among the saints."-Ibid.

[13605] What are the necessary conditions of an effective moral power, of a power which shall stimulate and control feeling, resolution, action? There are, I apprehend, two main conditions which must be satisfied by any such power which are satisfied, and that amply by the resurrection of our Saviour. For human life, looked at on its practical side, is made up of two things, action and suffering. And Christian life corresponds to human life in this, that it too, and in an eminent degree, is made up of these two things. A Christian acts, and a Christian suffers, not because he cannot help doing so, but with his heart and in virtue of a principle. He transfigures the necessities of ordinary human life into opportunities for acts of virtue. But then, if he attempts more, he also needs more than natural men need, a more definite and higher aim, a more pleasant and sustaining aid. Now the resurrection of the Lord Jesus satisfies these conditions, and I add that it does so on a magnificent scale. . . . It opens out before the eye of the soul its one adequate end in all action and in all endurance-union of the whole man with God, extending throughout the vast perspectives of a boundless eternity.—Ibid.

[13606] We live in a day when men ask for positive grounds of thought and action, and the power before us is the power not of a sentiment but of a fact. The phases of mere feeling which pass rapidly over the generation of men are like the forms of the clouds above our heads, beautiful but evanescent, but a fact such as the resurrection remains. . . . It remains through days, through years, almost through lives of neglect, to claim at the last the vast homage of the mind