[6207] The Synopists record, that the Body of Jesus was wrapped' in a linen cloth;' St. John tells us that it was bound' with the aloes and myrrh of Nicodemus into swathes' or cloths,' even as they were found afterwards in the empty tomb, and by their side the napkin,' or soudarion, for the head. I have tried to combine the account of the Synoptists and that of St. John into a continuous narrative.
[6208] Sanh. 47 b.
[6209] Ohai. ii. 4.
[6210] But it must be admitted, that there are difficulties on this particular. See the remarks on this point at pp. 623 and 631, but especially pp, 636, 637.
[6211] See The Temple and its Services,' pp. 221-224. __________________________________________________________________
CHAPTER XVI. ON THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST FROM THE DEAD.
The history of the Life of Christ upon earth closes with a Miracle as great as that of its inception. It may be said that the one casts light upon the other. If He was what the Gospels represent Him, He must have been born of a pure Virgin, without sin, and He must have risen from the Dead. If the story of His Birth be true, we can believe that of His Resurrection; if that of His Resurrection be true, we can believe that of His Birth. In the nature of things, the latter was incapable of strict historical proof; and, in the nature of things, His Resurrection demanded and was capable of the fullest historical evidence. If such exists, the keystone is given to the arch; the miraculous Birth becomes almost a necessary postulate, and Jesus is the Christ in the full sense of the Gospels. And yet we mark, as another parallel point between the account of the miraculous Birth and that of the Resurrection, the utter absence of details as regards these events themselves. If this circumstance may be taken as indirect evidence that they were not legendary, it also imposes on us the duty of observing the reverent silence so well-befitting the case, and not intruding beyond the path which the Evangelic narrative has opened to us.
That path is sufficiently narrow, and in some respects difficult; not, indeed, as to the great event itself, nor as to its leading features, but as to the more minute details. And here, again, our difficulties arise, not so much from any actual disagreement, as from the absence of actual identity. Much of this is owning to the great compression in the various narratives, due partly to the character of the event narrated, partly to the incomplete information possessed by the narrators - of whom only one was strictly an eyewitness, but chiefly to this, that to the different narrators the central point of interest lay in one or the other aspect of the circumstances connected with the Resurrection. Not only St. Matthew, [6212] but also St. Luke, so compresses the narrative that the distinction of points of time' is almost effaced. St. Luke seems to crowd into the Easter Evening what himself tells us occupied forty days. [6213] His is, so to speak, the pre-eminently Jerusalem account of the evidence of the Resurrection; that of St. Matthew the pre-eminently Galilean account of it. Yet each implies and corroborates the facts of the other. [6214] In general we ought to remember, that the Evangelists, and afterwards St. Paul, are not so much concerned to narrate the whole history of the Resurrection as to furnish the evidence for it. And here what is distinctive in each is also characteristic of his special view-point. St. Matthew describes the impression of the full evidence of that Easter morning on friend and foe, and then hurries us from the Jerusalem stained with Christ's Blood back to the sweet Lake and the blessed Mount where first He spake. It is, as if he longed to realise the Risen Christ in the scenes where he had learned to know Him. St. Mark, who is much more brief, gives not only a mere summary, [6215] but, if one might use the expression, tells it as from the bosom of the Jerusalem family, from the house of his mother Mary. [6216] St. Luke seems to have made most full inquiry as to all the facts of the Resurrection, and his narrative might almost be inscribed: Easter Day in Jerusalem.' St. John paints such scenes - during the whole forty days, whether in Jerusalem or Galilee - as were most significant and teachful of this threefold lesson of his Gospels: that Jesus was the Christ, that He was the Son of God, and that, believing, we have life in His Name. Lastly, St. Paul - as one born out of due time - produces the testimony of the principal witnesses to the fact, in a kind of ascending climax. [6217] And this the more effectively, that he is evidently aware of the difficulties and the import of the question, and has taken pains to make himself acquainted with all the facts of the case.