Page images
PDF
EPUB

had been any time dead, and having been assured [of this] by the centurion, he granted the body to Joseph. Then Joseph came, and took the body [from the cross]: Nicodemus, who at first went to Jesus by night, also came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes-wood, about a hundred pounds [in weight]: so they took the body of Jesus, and having purchased new linen, bound the body in bandages with the spices according to the Jewish manner of embalming. Now in the place where Jesus had been crucified was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb which [Joseph] had caused to be hewn for himself out of the rock, [but] wherein no one had ever been laid. There then, on account of the Jews' preparation-day, as the sabbath was approaching and the tomb near, they laid Jesus, and after rolling a large stone against the entrance of the tomb they departed. Meanwhile Mary of Magdala, and Mary [the mother] of Joses were sitting opposite, and with the other women observed the tomb, and how the body was laid; after which, returning [into the city], they provided spices and ointments, but rested on the sabbath-day according to the commandment. On the following day, that is [the day] after the preparationday,* the chief priests and Pharisees went in a body to Pilate and said,—" Sir, we remember that when this impostor was alive he said, Within three days I shall rise [from the dead]. Command therefore that the tomb be secured till the third day, lest his disciples should go and steal him [away], and tell the people, He is risen from the dead; for this last imposture would be worse than the first."-Pilate said to them,-"Take a guard, go [and]

* Namely, the sabbath; described in this circumlocutory manner by Matthew, chap. 27, v. 62, apparently to avoid the indecorum of directly charging the chief priests, etc., with sabbath-breaking.

make [every thing] secure in your own way."*-So they went, and after sealing the stone, secured the tomb by the guard.

*

* Εχετε κουστωδίαν, ὑπάγετε, ἀσφαλίσασθε ὡς οἴδατε. Matt. chap. 27, v. 65.

CHAPTER II.

SUMMARY OF THE PRINCIPAL CIRCUMSTANCES WHICH ATTENDED THE DEATH OF CHRIST.

ALTHOUGH important explanations of the death of Christ are furnished by other portions of Scripture, the principal information respecting the mode in which it happened must obviously be derived from the narratives of the four evangelists, which, in a combined and harmonized form, have now been presented. The whole transaction was extraordinary and peculiar. On this occasion, as on some others which required a decisive evidence of the truth of revelation, the hand of God was displayed in first appointing, and afterward accomplishing a conjuncture of circumstances so complex and seemingly incompatible, that had it not been actually realized, few persons would have believed its possibility, and none would have ventured to predict its occurrence. Many centuries before the event, the voice of prophecy had proclaimed that the Saviour of mankind would suffer a death at once violent and voluntary, as a criminal, and as a victim, universally approved by God and man, yet loaded with the malediction of both. His death was to be directed by Jewish priests without power, and executed by Gentile rulers without authority, and he was to be condemned on a charge in which, notwithstanding their religious hostility, both parties could unite in attesting and rejecting his claims as the Messiah. He was to suffer the death of the

cross, which commonly happened by slow exhaustion, and in Judea was usually hastened by breaking the legs, yet none of his bones was to be broken. His heart was at the same time to be pierced, and he was to die suddenly as a sin-offering by the effusion of his life's blood, the appointed means of atonement, although the former was not essential to the punishment of crucifixion, and the latter was the very reverse of its usual effect. The actual accomplishment of all these intricate and apparently discordant conditions is formally asserted in various parts of the New Testament, not as a casual coincidence, but as indispensably necessary to the fulfilment of prophecy, the veracity of which would have been forfeited had any one of them failed to take place.

To prevent misapprehension, it is proper to state that in the following investigation the union of the divine and human natures in the person of Christ is fully acknowledged, but that, in conformity with the dictates both of reason and revelation, the two natures are regarded as totally distinct, the latter only having been susceptible of suffering and death. Hence, in all that concerns the sufferings and death of the Saviour, attention will be exclusively directed to a pure and perfect human nature, subject to those influences and agencies which the circumstances involved, and which the Scriptures represent. With such a nature specially prepared by the Holy Spirit, and fitted to make an atoning sacrifice for the sins of the world, in the full possession of all his faculties, and in the very prime and vigor of life, a little under thirty-five years of age, the Redeemer entered on his sufferings, which were completed within the space of eighteen hours, and actually occupied eight. The discourses and devotional exercises in which he engaged with his apostles after the paschal supper, probably celebrated in a house on Mount Zion, must have been continued till an advanced hour of the night, since they were

of considerable length, and it was already late when they began.* Hence, it could not have been much before midnight when he arrived in the garden of Gethsemane, at the foot of the Mount of Olives. There, during an hour from which he earnestly prayed to be delivered, he was seized with mental anguish of so peculiar and intense a character as to force from him a bloody sweat; and which, had he not been strengthened by supernatural aid, might very possibly have occasioned his death on the spot. During the ten following hours, the greater part of which was passed before the tribunals of the Sanhedrim and of Pontius Pilate, he evinced the utmost firmness and self-possession; and, with the exception of the indignities offered him by the Jewish domestics and the Roman soldiers, his bodily sufferings were chiefly confined to the scourging which generally preceded crucifixion, and in his case was designed to supersede it. Some commentators have imagined that this scourging was unusually severe, but to such a supposition the scriptural narrative gives no countenance, and the respect manifested by Pilate toward a prisoner whom he repeatedly declared to be innocent, and anxiously labored to release, renders it inadmissible. The crucifixion of Christ occupied the exact interval of six hours, between the times of the morning and evening sacrifice in the temple, on the first day of the paschal festival, having commenced at the third hour of the day, and terminated at the ninth. From some expressions which fell from him, it is evident that during the latter part of this awful period the peculiar sufferings of Gethsemane were re

* On mentioning the retirement of Judas Iscariot, which took place after the paschal supper, and before the commencement of Christ's discourses with the other apostles, John states that "it was night."Chap. 13, v. 29, 30.

+ Coinciding with nine o'clock in the forenoon, and three in the afternoon, according to modern European computation.

« PreviousContinue »