The Ansel and the Women. —He had scared the soldiers with withering fear ; he now soothes the affrighted women with words of surpassing consolation : Fear ye not [the 4ueis in opposition to the terror-stricken guard] : I know that ye seek Jesus which was crucified. He is not here. HE IS RISEN' (Matt., Mark). To give clearness to their conviction, he graciously invites them to survey the place where the Lord had lain, and then dismisscs them with a message to his disciples, that they should see him in Galilee, as he had in deed appointed before his death (Matt. xxvi. 32 ; Mark. xiv. 28). This reference to his own dis tinct appointment with them is remarkable and important—important, as helping them to a belief in his resurrection, when they should recall his words and compare them with the angel's message; and remarkable, as indicating the unswerving ad vance of his purposed mission to tbe end. How appalling the events which had happened since Thursday evening, when he said : After I am risen, I will go before you into Galilee !' Could anything better tend to rally the prostrate and scattered sheep' of his fold than this quiet re sumption of a purpose, which Gethsemane and Calvary and the grave had failed to drive from his memory ? This clause of the message, on reflec tion, must have proved to the disciples, notwith standing their tardiness of mind, a fruitful germ of ultimate conviction.
Message to Peter. — St. Mark, probably from St. Peter's own information, adds a very beautiful and affecting incident of the angers message, when he inserts in it the fallen but contrite apostle's own name ; Go your way, tell his disciples, ana' Peter, that he goeth before you into Galilee !' The Lord had spared a yearning look of pitiful compassion for the son of Jonas in the midst of his own suffer ings. Death quenched not that love. The first act of his restored life, while quitting his tomb, was to give his angel a charge concerning his dis ciple, whom he would not have isolated a moment from his brethren in the thrilling interest which the glad Easter tidings was to bring to them all ! Surely this kindly care for Peter must have pre sented to the minds of all another sign of the iden tity of Him, who had risen, with their dear Lord and master ! Commissioned with this first mes sage from the tomb, the messengers ` departed quickly from the sepulchre with fear and great joy, and did run to bring his disciples word' (Matthew) ; so intent were they on their errand, and so absorbed (as was natural) with their won drous subject, that, as St. Mark takes care to in f•-)rm us, they stopped not by the way to impart to any whom they met the grand secret of their breast (xvi. 8).
Rcport of the watch. —Others, however, found their way to the city from the sepulchre, who were more communicative of their wonderful informa tion. St. Matthew tells us ' (xxviii. i) that some of the terrified watch went and shewed the chief priests all the things that had happened.* These nialigmant enemies of Christ, true to their miserable determination to resist the tnith to the last, instantly convene a meeting of the Sanhedrim either in full body or in committee, and after deliberation re solve upon a measure which brands with the mark of an ineffaceable ignominy the desperate effort of expiring Judaism to check the progress of a sacred cause, of the success of which their own minds could not but entertain painful presentiments. This they gave proof of by the palpably insincere measures which the priests and elders adopted to neutralise the effect in the popular mind, which they had so foully tampered with, of the report of the resurrection. Having seduced the traitor Judas with a bribe, they repeat the expedient and pollute their treasury by appropriating out of it a large sum (Matt. xxviii. 13) to induce the soldiers to propagate their lying report that ` Christ's disciples had come in the night and stolen him away while they slept." If this come to the governor's ears,'
said thc miserable schemers to their dupes, we will persuade him and secure you.' The evangelist concludes his account of this humiliating and futile effort of the Sanliedrim with a sentence of the keenest and most damaging irony, So they took the money and did as they were taught ; and this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day' (ver. 15). Of this last statement a curious and offensive illustration occurs in the Talmudic tractate, Toledoth Yeschu, which is full of the spirit of Jesus-hating Judaistn. (This piece of blasphem ous ribaldry is reprinted and confuted ill . C. Wagenseil's Tela iguna Seance [sub. fin.1). It is some relief to discover that some' of the watch only put themselves in the hands of the malignant hierarchs. The other guards appear to have been so overcome by the phenomena of the sepulchre as to have recognised the true state of the case, and to have declined being a party to a project which was as stupid and self-refuting as it was insincere and malicious—which required them to have been asleep and yet to have seen thieves and tomb-riflers, and to have known them to be disciples ! Mary Magdalene and the two Apostles.—We turn from this unhappy attempt to nip the bud of the great Christian mystery to the wonderful succession of proofs which soon put it beyond all reasonable doubt. Mary Magdalene sought out, apparently without any difficulty, the hvo apostles to whom she betook herself in her bewilderment. They might be lodging nearer at hand than the others, or Mary 113 ight have counted on a special sympathy from them. The promptitude with which they obeyed her summons is noticeable. The eager alacrity of Peter, who, although outrun by his mole youthful companion in their hurried course to the garden, was the first to enter the sepulchre, profoundly agrees with the Saviour's advance to wara's hint. John afterwards followed his friend's example, and the result of their combined examina tion of the burial-place corroborated indeed the substance of the Magdalene's statement that the body was removed, but it seemed at the same time to correct the chief impression which afflicted her, that the removal was the work of enemies. The neat and orderly condition of all the grave clothes, which the Evangelist is careful to mention, as if in refutation of all doubt that the tomb had been robbed by either friend or foe, struck the two apostles with a surprise which lea' to a conviction of all the truth. St. John, at least, who speaks for himself, expressly attributes his own first belief of the resurrection to the wonderfully convincing appearance of the interior of the tomb (xx. 8). We do not hesitate to accept this higher sense of St. John's 47riareuuev with Lampe, Neander, Alford, De Wette, Meyer, Robinson, and Wordsworth, although opposed to Bengel, Stier, Ebrard, Grotius, and even Augustine, who merely suppose the ` belief' to have been that the body was gone, as Maly had told them. Striking that the first ray of the Sun of Righteousness should have flashed upon him in the darkness of the tomb ! From the spark of that light of the sepulchre with what bright beams of light ' has not the church of the risen Christ been enlightened by the doctrine of the blessed Apostle and Evangelist St. John !' (See Collect for St. yohn's Day). What the immediate effect of the sight upon Peter was we are not told by his brother apostle. If the latter could have associated his friend in the joy of his own faith, he, no doubt, gladly would. We may conclude then, from his silence, that Peter's faith was yet to be born. St. Luke (xxiv. 12), referring either to this or a later visit of this Apostle to the tomb, says that he ` departed, wondering in himself at what was come to pass' (see below).