an honoured name among the many, and His miracles and teaching had been proclaimed in admiring wonder through all the land; and yet, now, in His death of shame, these are the two, the only two, who acknowledge Him dead, whom they feared to own when living, while those who had been His friends and followers had all forsaken Him and fled! Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus would have been the two last whom human sagacity or human sorrow would have looked to in that moment of emergency. "My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord;" and we may as gratefully, as triumphantly, exclaim, "O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are His judgments, and his ways past finding out!"

SECTION LXXXIX.

(Chapter xxviii. verses 1—11.)

IN the 110th Psalm, which is so undoubtedly declaratory of the exaltation and triumph of Christ, it is said in the last verse, "He shall drink of the brook in the way therefore shall He lift up the head;" that is, in His way to glory He should drink deep of the waters of affliction and bitterness: the cross, with its shame and suffering, like a turbid brook in the way, should meet Him on His road-the cup of His Father's wrath was to be drained to the uttermost; and having bowed His head to drink,

having on that cross "bowed His head, and given up the ghost," therefore shall He lift up that head; on that very account, because He hath finished the work which the Father had given Him to do, therefore He should arise triumphant from the grave, and "lead captivity captive." As the apostle expresses the same truth, "He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross: wherefore God also hath highly exalted Him." "It was not possible," says St. Peter, commenting on the resurrection of Jesus, "it was not possible for Him to be holden of death." It was but in vain that the chief priests and elders had sealed the door of the tomb with the signet-ring of Pilate, lest any should break in; it was to no purpose that Roman soldiers surrounded the tomb, till the dreaded third day was passed; vain, too, the very rock which inclosed the body of Jesus, and the "great stone" which blocked up the entrance of the grave. A solitary angel from heaven descended, and with a mighty earthquake rent the rock, rolled back the stone from the door of the tomb, and took his seat upon it, and Jesus came forth, the First-fruits of the grave, the Firstbegotten of the dead. It is true that Jesus was not the actual first that returned from death unto life. In the Old Testament there are instances of "women who received their dead raised to life again." Jesus Himself had recalled three from death unto life; and St. Matthew records that, in that convulsion of nature which attended the

crucifixion, the very graves were rent asunder, and many bodies of the saints, which slept, arose. But still Jesus was pre-eminently and alone the First-fruits of His own glorious victory: they arose at another's bidding, and by another's power; He at His own, and by His own right arm they arose to return again to decay, He dieth no more, death hath no more dominion over Him. They arose to give the glorious assurance, that, though death hath passed upon all men, for that all have sinned, yet, when that "last enemy" shall have exhausted all his power, when his last victim has been laid low, and "death itself," and "all things," are put under the Conqueror's feet, then shall all those who entered. their graves before the coming of Jesus in the flesh, be alike partakers with the later, and the latest, dead in the glorious resurrection of their risen Lord, "Christ, the First-fruits, afterwards they that are Christ's at His coming."

But we at least are not likely to dispute or doubt the point. The grateful language of our hearts, I trust, is that of Peter, "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which, according to His abundant mercy, hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." And what is this "lively hope" which the apostle sets before us? "An inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you." But let us not forget what he adds, "Reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of

God through faith unto salvation." Here is the great secret of the saint's strength and standing,

-"kept by the power of God;" and that power sought and attained through the continual exercise of a living faith. I would say then to you, and to my own soul, Look to a crucified Saviour. He died for our sins: it was on that cross on Calvary that the conflict with the powers of darkness was fought; it was there He travailed, there He was sore oppressed and heavy-laden; there He poured out his soul unto death, and apparently retired from the contest a defeated and prostrate victim. But look a few hours onward, and that same Jesus who, being "delivered by the determinat counsel and foreknowledge of God, was taken, and by wicked hands was crucified and slain; Him God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be holden of them." The prayer of our Church, in her baptismal service, beautifully and emphatically combines both events in the admission of her young ones into Christ's fold, that, they are made partakers of the death of Jesus, so they may be partakers of His resurrection also;" and, with parental fidelity, before she dismisses the sponsors from her presence, reminds them of our mutual profession, "which is to follow the example of our Saviour Christ, and to be made like unto Him; that, as He died and rose again for us, so should we, who are baptized, die from sin, and rise again unto righteousness; continually mortifying all our evil and corrupt

"as

affections, and daily proceeding in all virtue and godliness of living."

SECTION XC.

(Chapter xxviii. verse 11 to the end.)

THE narrative of events after the resurrection of our Lord is very much shortened in St. Matthew's Gospel. He mentions none of the interviews which Jesus had with His disciples, except the one on the morning of the resurrection, with the women, as they were hastening to tell the disciples of what they had just witnessed at the tomb; and the one immediately preceding His ascension into heaven, in Galilee. St. Matthew, however, is the only one who mentions the story concocted by the chief priests with the soldiers to account for the absence of the body of Jesus from the grave; and as we shall not meet with it elsewhere, I will just devote a few moments to it. It is in itself too absurd to need refutation; but as the Spirit of God permitted and directed its being recorded, it is not to be altogether passed by without notice. It was very possibly a part of the plan of these chief priests and elders, or at least one would think it would naturally have suggested itself to their minds, that as the prediction of Jesus, that He should rise again on the third day, was so well known, and they had themselves unwittingly given currency to the rumour by making it the subject of a formal and official communication to