cified, lay down His life, and become obedient even unto death. Let this be established in our minds. Our Sa- viour really and truly died.
Let us notice, for one thing in this passage, what honorable mention is here made of women. We are specially told that, when our Lord gave up the ghost, " there were women looking on afar off." The names of some of them are recorded. We are also told that they were the same who had followed our Lord in Galilee and ministered unto Him, and that there were " many other women which came up with him to Jerusalem."
We should hardly have expected to have read such things. We might well have supposed that, when all the disciples but one had forsaken our Lord and fled, the weaker and more timid sex would not have dared to show themselves His friends. It only shows us what grace can do. God sometimes chooses the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty. The last are sometimes first, and the first last. The faith of women sometimes stands upright, when the faith of men fails and gives way.
But it is interesting to remark throughout the New Testament how often we find the grace of God glorified in women, and how much benefit God has been pleased to confer through them on the Church, and on the world. In the Old Testament, we see sin and death brought in by the woman's transgression. In the New, we see Jesus born of a woman, and life and immortality brought to light by that miraculous birth. In the Old Testa- ment, we often see woman proving a hindrance and a snare to man. The women before the flood, the histo-
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ries of Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Delilah, Bath-sheba, Jezebel, are all painful examples. In the New Testa- ment, we generally see women mentioned as a help and assistance to the cause of true religion. Elizabeth, Mary, Martha, Dorcas, Lydia, and the women named by St. Paul to the Romans, are all cases in point. The contrast is striking, and we need not doubt intentional. It is one of the many proofs, that grace is more abun- dant under the Gospel than under the law. It seems meant to teach us that women have an important place in the Church of Christ, one that ought to be assigned to them, and one that they ought to fill. There is a great work that women can do for God's glory, without being public teachers. Happy is that congregation in which women know this, and act upon it !
Let us notice, for another thing, in this passage, that Jesus has friends of whom little is known. We cannot conceive a more remarkable proof of this than the per- son who is here mentioned for the first time, Joseph of Arimathasa. We know nothing of this man's former history. We know not how he had learned to love Christ, and to desire to do Him honor. We know nothing of his subsequent history after our Lord left the world. All we know is the touching collection of facts before us. We are told that he " waited for the kingdom of God, and that at a time when our Lord's disciples had all forsaken Him, He " went in boldly unto Pilate, and craved the body of Jesus," and buried it honorably in his own tomb. Others had honored and confessed our Lord when they saw Him working miracles, but Joseph honored Him and confessed himself a disciple, when he