We may have no sympathy with the practice of pilgrimages and little interest in the identification of holy places; but the holy sepulchre cannot but attract the believing heart. It was a practice of the piety of former days to meditate among the tombs. The piety of the present day inclines to more cheerful and, let us hope, not less healthy exercises. But every man with any depth of nature must linger sometimes beside the graves of his loved ones; every man of any seriousness must think sometimes of his own grave. And in such moments what can be so helpful as to pilgrim in spirit to the tomb of Him who said, "I am the resurrection and the life"?
In comparison with the great ones of the earth Jesus had but a humble funeral; yet in the character of those who did Him the last honours it could not have been surpassed; and it was rich in love, which can well take the place of a great deal of ceremony. So at last, stretched out in the new tomb, wherein man had never lain, enwrapped in an aromatic bed of spices and breathed round by the fragrance of flowers, with the white linen round Him and the napkin which hid the wounds of the thorns about His brow, while the great stone which formed the door stood between Him and the world, He lay down to rest. It was evening, and the Sabbath drew on; and the Sabbath of His life had come. His work was completed; persecution and hatred could not reach Him any more; He was where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest.
[1] The most beautiful thing ever said about the bodies of the dead is in the Shorter Catechism: "And their bodies, being still united to Christ, do rest in their graves till the resurrection."
[2] On these and similar details see _The Life of our Lord as exemplified in Works of Art_, by Mrs. Jameson (completed by Lady Eastlake).
[3] Many interesting details in Ross's _Cradle of Christianity_.