limestone rock. This made it clearly impossible for any one to gay, that the disciples made a subterraneous entrance into the tomb by night and stole the body away. By the entrance that it was carried into the sepulchre, by the same it must be car- ried out. — (6) Our Lord's tomb was a new one, in which no one had ever been laid. This made it impossible for any one to say, after the resurrection, that there was no proof that Jesus rose from the dead, and that it might possibly be some one else. This could not be, when His body was the first and only body that was ever laid in this grave. Wonderful is it to see how at every turn the overruling wisdom of God has stopped, ob- viated, and frustrated, by wise provisions, the objections of infidels. 42. — [Then laid they Jesus, etc.] In order to see the full meaning of this verse, we should slightly invert the order of the words, and paraphrase them in some such way as this : — " In this new rock-hewn tomb, therefore, Joseph and Nicodemus laid the body of Jesus, because it was conveniently nigh at hand, and because the Jews ' preparation day, or day preceding the pass- over sabbath, left them little time, and made it necessary to hasten their proceedings." — We may well believe that these two holy men had but little time, when we consider that our Lord did not give up the ghost till three o'clock, that the day ended at six, and that only three hours were left for Joseph to go to Pilate and get leave to remove the body from the cross, for Joseph and Nicodemus to take the nails out and lift the body from the tree, for wrapping the body in linen with a hun- dred pounds of myrrh and aloes, and for finally carrying it to the tomb and rolling a huge stone to the mouth of the tomb. When we remember, besides this, that the body of a full-grown man wrapped in linen with a hundred pounds of additional •weight in myrrh and aloes, would be a most awkward and diffi- cult burden for two men to carry, we may well believe that nothing but severe exertion could have enabled Joseph and Nicodemus to finish their labor of love before six o'clock. The wonder is that they managed to do it at all. It certainly could not have been done if they had not got a sepulchre nigh at hand. Again the Holy Ghost appears to me to foresee the ob- jection that there was not time to bury our Lord, and merciful- ly supplies the words which answer it: "the sepulchre was nigh at hand." Even then we can hardly doubt that John and the women from Galilee must have lent some help. At all events it is distinctly recorded that the women were present, and that they were sitting by and beheld where the body was laid.
Thus ended the most wonderful funeral the sun ever shone upon. Such a death and such a burial, — so little understood by man and so important in the sight of God, — there never was, and never can be again. Who need doubt the love of Christ, when we consider the deep humiliation that Christ went through for our sakes ! To tabernacle in our fiesh at all, to die after th«
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