But all appeared to be gone now. Love still kept watch. Spices were prepared to embalm the precious form with no hope, apparently, of its resurrection. It had faded out from their minds as it seems to fade out of the minds of us Christians when we bewail our dead and speak of them as "lost." Their Jesus was to them dead and gone; and why this thing was permitted was a dark, insoluble mystery. "We trusted that it had been he that should have redeemed Israel," said the two disciples, sadly walking on the way to Emmaus. "We trusted!" All in the past tense. Not a word of any hope or faith in the resurrection! And yet their Lord and Master was even at that moment walking with them and comforting their hearts.
Surely, in this respect, we modern Christians too often tread in the footsteps of the saints and suffer as they did. But our Lord knows our weakness; he knows the physical faintness which comes from long watching, the obscuration of mind which comes from sorrow, and he is at hand to comfort us in our blind weeping. Mary Magdalene knew him not, because her eyes were full of tears, till his well-known voice called her name. The mourning disciples as they walked to Emmaus knew not that Jesus was walking by them. And so, ever since, to weary hearts and lonely homes the comforting Christ still comes invisibly, with sweetness and rest, if only we of little faith would remember his promises and recognize his presence. Still now, as he first announced himself, he comes "to heal the broken-hearted," and is beside them ever in the darkest and most dreadful hour of their afflictions.
XXIX
THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS
Easter Sunday
There is something wonderfully poetic in the simple history given by the different Evangelists of the resurrection of our Lord. It is like a calm, serene, dewy morning, after a night of thunder and tempest. One of the most beautiful features in the narrative is the presence of those godlike forms of our angel brethren. How can it be possible that critics with human hearts have torn and mangled this sacred picture for the purpose of effacing these celestial forms—so beautiful, so glorious! Is it superstition to believe that there are higher forms of life, intellect, and energy than those of earth; that there are races of superior beings between us and the throne of God, as there are gradations below us of less and lessening power down to the half-vegetable zoöphytes? These angels, with their power, their purity, their unfading youth, their tender sympathy for man, are a radiant celestial possibility which every heart must long to claim as not only probable but certain.
The history of our Lord from first to last is fragrant with the sympathy and musical with the presence of these shining ones. They announced his coming to the Blessed among Women. They filled the air with songs and rejoicings at the hour of his birth. They ministered to him during his temptations in the wilderness. When repentant sinners thronged about him and Scribes and Pharisees sneered, it was to the sympathy of these invisible ones that he turned, as those whose hearts thrilled with joy over the repenting sinner. In the last mysterious agony at Gethsemane it was an angel that appeared and strengthened him. And now with what godlike energy do they hasten upon their mission to attend their king's awaking!
"And, behold, there was a great earthquake, for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and rolled back the stone from the door of the sepulchre, and sat upon it. His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment was white as snow, and for fear of him the keepers did shake and became as dead men."
In another Evangelist we have a scene that preceded this. These devoted women, in whose hearts love outlived both faith and hope, rose while it was yet dark, and set out with their spices and perfumes to go and pay their last tribute of affection and reverence to the dead.