sepulchre. They had bought some of those precious drugs, which were used for the preservation of the remains of the more opulent, on the evening of the crucifixion; and though the body had been anointed and wrapt in spices in the customary manner, previously to the burial, this further mark of respect was strictly according to usage. But this circumstance, thus casually mentioned, clearly shows that the women, at least, had no hope whatever of any change which could take place as to the body of Jesus (1). The party of women consisted of Mary of Magdala, a town near the lake of Tiberias; Mary, the wife of Alpheus, mother of James and Joses; Joanna, wife of Chuza, Herod's steward; and Salome "the mother of Zebedee's children." They were all Galileans, and from the same neighbourhood; all faithful attendants on Jesus, and related to some of the leading disciples. They set out very early; and as perhaps they had to meet from different quarters, some not unlikely from Bethany, the sun was rising before they reached the garden. Before their arrival, the earthquake or atmospheric commotion (2) had taken place; the tomb had burst open; and the terrified guard had fled to the city. Of the sealing of the stone, and the placing of the guard they appear to have been ignorant, as, in the most natural manner, they seem suddenly to remember the difficulty of removing the ponderous stone which closed the sepulchre, and which would require the strength of several men to raise it from its place. Sepulchres in the East, those at least belonging to men of rank and opulence, were formed of an outward small court or enclosure, the entrance to which was covered by a huge stone; and within were cells or chambers, often hewn in the solid rock, for the deposit of the dead. As the women drew near, they saw that the stone had been removed and the first glance into the open sepulchre discovered that the body was no longer there. At this sight Mary Madalene appears to have hurried back to the city, to give information to Peter and John. These disciples, it may be remembered, where the only two who followed Jesus to his trial; and it is likely that they were together in some part of the city, while the rest were scattered in different quarters, or perhaps had retired to Bethany. During the absence of Mary, the other women made a closer inspection; they entered the inner (1) In a prolusion of Griesbach, De fontibus unde Evangelista suas de resurrectione Domini narrationes hauserint, it is observed, that the Evangelists seem to have dwelt on those particular points in which they were personally concerned. This appears to furnish a very simple key to their apparent discrepancies. John, who received his first intelligence from Mary Magda lene, makes her the principal person in his narrative, while Matthew, who, with the rest of the disciples, derived his information from the other women, gives their relation, and omits the ap pearance of Jesus to the Magdalene. St. Mark gives a few additional minute particulars, but the narrative of St. Luke is altogether more vague and general. He blends together, as a later bistorian, studious of compression, the two separate transactions; he ascribes to the women collectively that communication of the intelligence to the assembled body of the Apostles which appears to have been made separately to two distinct parties; and disregarding the order of time, he after that reverts to the visit of St. Peter to the sepulchre. (2) Zoos is rather an ambiguous term, though it usually means an earthquake. Peter and chamber, they saw the grave-clothes lying in an orderly manner, the bandage or covering of the head rolled up, and placed on one side; this circumstance would appear incompatible with the haste of a surreptitious, or the carelessness of a violent, removal. To their minds thus highly excited, and bewildered with astonishment, with terror, and with grief, appeared, what is described by the Evangelist as" a vision of angels." One or more beings in human form seated in the shadowy twilight within the sepulchre, and addressing them with human voices, told them that their Master had risen from the grave, that he was to go before them into Galilee. They had departed to communicate these wonderful tidings to Arrival of the other disciples, before the two summoned by Mary Magdalene John. arrived; of these the younger and more active, John, outran the older, Peter. But he only entered the outer chamber, from whence he could see the state in which the grave-clothes were lying; but before he entered the inner chamber, he awaited the arrival of his companion. Peter went in first, and afterwards John, who, as he states, not till then, believed that the body had been taken away, for, up to that time, the Apostles themselves had no thought or expectation of the resurrection (1). These two Apostles returned home, leaving Mary Magdalene, who probably wearied by her walk to the city and her return, had not come up with them till they had completed their search. The other women, meantime, had fled in haste, and in the silence of terror, through the hostile city; and until, later in the day, they found the Apostles assembled together, did not unburthen their hearts of this extraordinary First ap secret. Mary Magdalene (2) was left alone; she had seen and heard of Jesus to nothing of the evangelic vision which had appeared to the others; Mary Mag- but on looking down into the sepulchre, she saw the same vision pearance dalene. Later ap pearance. which had appeared to the others, and was in her turn addressed by the angels; and it seems that her feelings were those of unmitigated sorrow. She stood near the sepulchre weeping. To her Jesus then first appeared. So little was she prepared for his presence, that she at first mistook him for the person who had the charge of the garden. Her language is that of grief, because unfriendly hands have removed the body, and carried it away to some unknown place. Nor was it till he again addressed her, that she recognised his familiar forin and voice. The second (3) appearance of Jesus was to the other party of women, as they returned to the city, and, perhaps, separated to find out the different Apostles, to whom, when assembled, they related the whole of their adventure. In the mean time a third appearance (4) had taken place to two disciples who had made an excursion to Emmaus, a village between seven and eight miles from (1) John, xx. 8, 9. (2) Mark, xvi. 9-11.; John, xx. 11-18. (3) Matt. xxviii. 9, 10. (4) Mark, xvi. 12, 13.; Luke, xxiv. 13-32. Jerusalem a fourth to the Apostle Peter; this apparition is not noticed by the Evangelists; it rests on the authority of St. Paul (1). The intelligence of the women had been received with the utmost incredulity by the assembled Apostles. The arrival of the two disciples from Emmaus, with their more particular relation of his conversing with them; his explaining the Scriptures; his breaking bread with them; made a deeper impression. Still mistrust seems to have predominated; and when Jesus appeared in the chamber, the doors of which had been closed from fear lest their meeting should be interrupted by the hostile rulers, the first sensation was terror rather than joy. It was not till Jesus conversed with them, and permitted them to ascertain by actual touch the identity of his body, that they yielded to emotions of gladness. Jesus appeared a second time, eight days after (2), in the public assembly of the disciples, and condescended to remove the doubts of one Apostle, who had not been present at the former meeting, by permitting him to inspect and touch his wounds. ty of the This incredulity of the Apostles, related with so much simplicity, Increduliis, on many accounts, most remarkable, considering the apparent Apostles: distinctness with which Jesus appears to have predicted both his its cause. death and resurrection, and the rumour which put the Sanhedrin on their guard against any clandestine removal of the body. The key to this difficulty is to be sought in the opinions of the time. The notion of a resurrection was intimately connected with the coming of the Messiah, but that resurrection was of a character very different from the secret, the peaceful, the unimposing reappearance of Jesus after his death. It was an integral, an essential part of that splendid vision which represented the Messiah as summoning all the fathers of the chosen race from their graves to share in the glories of his kingdom (3). Even after the resurrection the bewildered Apostles inquire whether that kingdom, the only sovereignty of which they yet dreamed, was about to commence (4). The death of Jesus, notwithstanding his care to prepare their minds for that appalling event, took them by surprise they seem to have been stunned and confounded. It had shaken their faith by its utter incongruity with their preconceived notions, rather than confirmed it by its accordance with his own predictions; and in this perplexed and darkling state the resurrection came upon them not less strangely at issue with their conceptions of the manner in which the Messiah would return to the world. When Jesus had alluded with more or less prophetic distinctness to that event, their minds had, (1) It does not appear possible that Peter could be one of the disciples near Emmaus. It would harmonise the accounts if we could suppose that St. Paul (1 Cor. xv. 5.) originally dictated Kλora, which was changed for the more familiar name Кйфа. (2) Mark, xvi. 14-18.; Luke, xxiv. 36-49.; John, xx. 19-29. (3) See ch. ii. p. 78. (4) Acts, i. 6. Compare Luke, xxiv. 21. no doubt, reverted to their rooted opinions on the subject, and moulded up the plain sense of his words with some vague and confused interpretation framed out of their own traditions; the latter so far predominating, that their memory retained scarcely a vestige of the simpler truth, until it was forcibly re-awakened by its complete fulfilment in the resurrection of their Lord. Excepting among the immediate disciples, the intelligence of the resurrection remained, it is probable, a profound secret, or, at all events, little more than vague and feeble rumours would reach the ear of the Sanhedrin. For though Christ had taken the first step to re-organise his religion, by his solemn commission to the Apostles at his first appearance in their assembly, it was not till after the Return of return to Galilee, more particularly during one interview near the the Apos Lake of Gennesareth, that he invested Peter, and with him the rest Galilee. of the Apostles, with the pastoral charge over his new community. tles to Apostles in Judæa, Ascension. For, according to their custom, the Galilean Apostles had returned to their homes during the interval between the Passover and the Pentecost, and there, among the former scenes of his beneficent labours, on more than one occasion, the living Jesus had appeared, and conversed familiarly with them (1). Forty days after the crucifixion, and ten before the Pentecost, the Apostles were again assembled at their usual place of resort, in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, the village of Bethany. It was here, on the slope of the Mount of Olives, that, in the language of St. Luke," he was parted from them; ""he was taken up, and a cloud received him out of their sight (2)." During the interval between the Ascension and the day of Pentecost, the Apostles of Jesus regularly performed their devotions in the Temple, but they may have been lost and unobserved among the thousands who either returned to Jerusalem for the second great annual festival, or if from more remote parts, remained, as was customary, in the capital from the Passover to the Pentecost. The election of a new apostle to fill the mysterious number of twelve, a (1) Matt. xxviii. 16-20.; John, xxi. 1—23. Mark, in his brief and summary account, omits the journey to Galilee. Luke (xxiv. 49.) seems to intimate the contrary, as if he had known nothing of this retreat. This verse, however, may be a kind of continuation of verse 47, and is not to be taken in this strict sense, so as positively to exclude an intermediate journey to Galilee. (2) Neander has closed his life of Christ with some forcible observations on the Ascension, to which it has been objected that St. Luke alone, though in two places, Gosp. xxiv. 50, 51.; Acts, i. 9-11., mentions this most extraordinary event. "How could the resurrection of Christ have been to the disciples the groundwork of their belief in everlasting life, if it had been again followed hy his death? With the death of Christ the faith, especially in his resurrection and reappearance, must again, of necessity, have sunk away. Christ would again have appeared to them an ordinary man, their belief in him as the Messiah would have suffered a violent shock. How in this manner could that conviction of the exaltation of Christ have formed itself within them, which we find expressed in their writings with so much force and precision. Though the fact of his ascension, as visible to the senses, is witnessed expressly only by St. Luke, the language of St. John concerning his ascent to the Father, the declarations of all the apostles concerning his exaltation to heaven (see especially the strong expression of St. Mark, xvi. 19. H.M.), presuppose their conviction of his supernatural elevation from the earth, since the notion of his departure from this earthly life in the ordinary manner is thereby altogether excluded. Even if none of the apostolic writers had mentioned this visible and real fact, we might have safely inferred from all which they say of Christ, that in some form or other they presupposed a supernatural exaltation of Christ from this visible earthly world. Leben Jesu, p. 656. 203 number hallowed to Jewish feeling as that of the tribes of their ancestors, shows that they now looked upon themselves again as a permanent body, united by a federal principle, and destined for some ulterior purpose; and it is possible that they might look with eager hope to the feast of Pentecost, the celebration of the delivery of the law on Mount Sinai (1); the birthday as it were of the religious constitution of the Jews, as an epoch peculiarly suited for A postle. the reorganisation and reconstruction of the new kingdom of the Messiah. The Sanhedrin doubtless expected any thing rather than the revival of the religion of Jesus. The guards, who had fled from the sepulchre, had been bribed to counteract any rumour of the resurrection, by charging the disciples with the clandestine removal of the body. The city had been restored to peace, as if no extraordinary event had taken place. The Galileans, the followers of Jesus among the rest, had retired to their native province. In the popular estimation the claims of Jesus to the Messiahship were altogether extinguished by his death. The attempt to reinstate him who had been condemned by the Sanhedrin, and crucified by the Romans, in public reverence and belief, as the promised Redeemer, might have appeared a proceeding so desperate, as could not enter into the most enthusiastic mind. The character of the disciples of Jesus was as little calculated to awaken apprehension. The few richer or more influential persons who had been inclined to embrace his cause, even during his lifetime, had maintained their obnoxious opinions in secret. The ostensible leaders were men of low birth, humble occupations, deficient education, and--no unimportant objection in the mind of the Jews-Galileans. Never indeed was sect so completely centered in the person of its founder: the whole rested on his personal authority, emanated from his personal teaching; and however it might be thought, that some of his sayings might be treasured in the minds of his blind and infatuated adherents; however they might refuse to abandon the hope that he would appear again, as the Messiah; all this delusion would gradually die away, from the want of any leader qualified to take up and maintain a cause so lost and hopeless. Great must have been their astonishment at the intelligence, that the religion of Jesus had reappeared, in a new, in a more attractive form; that on the feast day which next followed their total dispersion, those humble, ignorant, and despised Galileans were making converts by thousands, at the very gates, even perhaps within the precincts of the Temple. The more visible circumstances of the miracle which took place on the day of Pentecost, the descent of the Holy Ghost, under the appearance of fiery tongues, in the private assembly of the Christians, might not reach (1) See the traditions on this subject in Meuschen N. T., a Talmude illustratum, p. 740. Election of a new Reappear ance of the reli gion of Jesus. |