The Pulpit Commentary — Matthew — Volume 2 — Section 645

he eaid, " Rejoice ! " May we share that holy joy I 6. They worshipped him. Let ua learn to worship here, that we may one day worship in heaven. Vers. 11-15.-The watch and the chief priests. I. TIIE REPOBT OP TIIB WATCB:l!lRB. 1. Thefr flight. They were all nghast with terror ; they knew not well what had hap- pened. ~he ea_rthquake had terrified them at first; then there came a vision dazzling like the ligLtnmg. From that moment they were as dead men ; they knew nothing more. When they recovered from that deathlike swoon the angel had vanished; all WIii! still and quiet. Perhaps they examined the sepulchre. The stone was rolled away; the tomb was open; it was empty. What could they do? They~had been posted there to guard it; they were in danger of death. Some fled away in terror; some, bolder than the others, or deeming perhaps that to tell the truth was the safest course, came into the city. 2. Their account. If they were, as it seems most probable, Roman soldiers, they were responsible to the governor; but they felt sure that he would disbelieve their story, and punish them for neglect of duty. It seemed safer to go to the chief priests, who were the persons most interested in the safety of the tomb, who might advise them what to do under the circumstances. They told them all the things that were done; they told them the facts of the case; the earthquake, the vision which they had seen, their own prostration, the empty tomb; they left the chief priests to draw their own conclusions. IL THE ACTION OF THE CHIEF PBmsTs. 1. The council. A meeting of the San- hedrin was hastily called. The chief priests were Sadducee& ; they believed that there was no resurrection, neither angel. nor spirit. Now they must have been in a diffi- culty. The great darkness of Friday, the earthquake, the rent veil, had appalled many hearts. The very thing had happened which they had anxiously tried to prevent; the sacred body had disappeared, and the soldiers brought strange stories of awful appari• tians, of earthquakes and lightning, and the supernatural removal of the great stone from the door of the sepulchre. But men can always discover reasons for disbelieving truths which they wish to repudiate ; they can al ways invent difficulties, discrepancies, explanations. The chief priests probably affected to believe that the guards, worn out by long watching, had been so bewildered by the earthquake as to see in the lightning• flashes the fancied form of an angel 'l'he Pharisees in the council did not share in the Sadducean heresies; but they had joined with the chief priests in the application to Pilate for a guard (eh. xxvii. 62). They were, equally with the Sadducees, hostile to the Lord, equally intermed in preventing the people from believing his resurrection. Doubtless those few counsellors, such as Joseph and Nicodemus, who had taken no part in compassing the Saviour's death, were not summoned to the meeting. To the rest the Resurrection involved awful consequences. It threw them into such an abyss of tremendous guilt and terrible condemnation, that we are not surprised if men who were evidently selfish, cruel, hypocritical, obstinately refused to admit the evidence of its truth. So, in the face of all testimony, in spite of the fact that the holy body was gone, and the cert.ain knowledge that foe would not, and friend could not, have home it away, they deceived themselves, or forced themselves into a disbelief of the Lord's resurrection. 2. Their 1Ua$ion. They pretended that what they had feared had really taken place. They made an arrangement with the soldiers; they were to say that while they slept his disciples came by night and stole him away. It was a dangerous thing for the soldiers; they might be punished with death for sleeping at their post, 1LS Herod afterwards treated the keepers of the prison from which St. Pet.er was released by the angeL So the chief priests undertook to secure them ; they promised to per- suade the governor if he should hear of the matter. '!'hey meant probably to bribe him ; and so they would set the soldiers free from anxiety. It was a wicked falsehood, an awful sin; for they were fighting against God; but the only alternative was an open acknowledgm.ent of the truth, and that would have brought upon them a tremendous disgrace. It would have been a confession of guilt-a confession that they had been in the wrong throughout, that they had been selfish, hollow, hypocritical, and that the Prophet of Galilee whom they so utterly hated, whom they had murdered, was indeed the Christ, the Son of the living God. 'l'hey could not bring themselves to this. They were the rulers of the people, the chiefs of the hierarchy; they could not humble thelilSelvea. They chose the alternative of falsehood. Thus it is that Bill leads c.n to CB, llVIII, 1-20.] THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTIIEW. 651