“Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here, but is risen.” Luke xxiv. 5, 6.
1 Such is the triumphant question with which the Holy Angels put to flight the sadness of the women on the morning of Christ’s resurrection. “O ye of little faith,” less faith than love, more dutiful than understanding, why come ye to anoint His Body on the third day? Why seek ye the Living Saviour in the tomb? The time of sorrow is run out; victory has come, according to His Word, and ye recollect it not. “He is not here, but is risen!”
These were deeds done and words spoken eighteen hundred years since; so long ago, that in the world’s thought they are as though they never had been; yet they hold good to this day. Christ is to us now, just what He was in all His glorious Attributes on the morning of the Resurrection; and we are blessed in knowing it, even more than the women to whom the Angels spoke, according to His own assurance, “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”
On this highest of Festivals, I will attempt to set before you one out of the many comfortable subjects of reflection which it suggests.
1. First, then, observe how Christ’s resurrection harmonizes with the history of His birth. David had foretold that His “soul should not be left in hell” (that is, the unseen state), neither should “the Holy One of God see corruption.” And with a reference to this prophecy, St. Peter says, that it “was not possible that He should be holden of death;” [Ps. xvi. 10. Acts ii. 24, 27 [^2]] as if there were some hidden inherent vigour in Him, which secured His manhood from dissolution. The greatest infliction of pain and violence could only destroy its powers for a season; but nothing could make it decay. “Thou wilt not suffer Thy Holy One to see corruption;” so says the Scripture, and elsewhere calls him the “Holy child Jesus.” [Acts iv. 27 [^3]] These expressions carry our minds back to the Angels’ announcement of His birth, in which His incorruptible and immortal nature is implied. “That Holy Thing” which was born of Mary, was “the Son,” not of man, but “of God.” Others have all been born in sin, “after Adam’s own likeness, in His image,” [Gen. v. 3.] and, being born in sin, they are heirs to corruption. “By one man sin entered into the world, and death,” and all its consequences, “by sin.” Not one human being comes into existence without God’s discerning evidences of sin attendant on his birth. But when the Word of Life was manifested in our flesh, the Holy Ghost displayed that creative hand by which, in the beginning, Eve was formed; and the Holy Child, thus conceived by the power of the Highest, was (as the history shows) immortal even in His mortal nature, clear from all infection of the forbidden fruit, so far as to be sinless and incorruptible. Therefore, though He was liable to death, “it was impossible He should be holden” of it. Death might overpower, but it could not keep possession; “it had no dominion over Him.” [Rom. vi. 9.] He was, in the words of the text, “the Living among the dead.”
And hence His rising from the dead may be said to have evinced His divine original. He was “declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit of Holiness;” that is, His essential Godhead, “by the resurrection of the dead.” [Rom. i. 4.] He had been condemned as a blasphemer by the Jewish rulers, “because He made Himself the Son of God;” and He was brought to the death of the Cross, not only as a punishment, but as a practical refutation of His claim. He was challenged by His enemies on this score: “If thou be the Son of God, come down from the cross.” Thus His crucifixion was as though a trial, a new experiment on the part of Satan, who had before tempted Him, whether he was like other men, or the Son of God. Observe the event. He was obedient unto death, fulfilling the law of that disinherited nature which He had assumed; and in order, by undergoing it, to atone for our sins. So far was permitted by God’s “determinate counsel and fore-knowledge;” but there the triumph of His enemies, so to account it, ended,—ended with what was necessary for our redemption. He said, “It is finished;” for His humiliation was at its lowest depth when He expired. Immediately some incipient tokens showed themselves, that the real victory was with Him; first, the earthquake and other wonders in heaven and earth. These even were enough to justify His claim in the judgment of the heathen centurion; who said at once, “Truly this was the Son of God.” Then followed His descent into hell, and triumph in the unseen world, whatever that was. Lastly, that glorious deed of power on the third morning which we now commemorate. The dead arose. The grave could not detain Him who “had life in Himself.” He rose as a man awakes in the morning, when sleep flies from him as a thing of course. Corruption had no power over that Sacred Body, the fruit of a miraculous conception. The bonds of death were broken as “green withes,” witnessing by their feebleness that He was the Son of God.