The Pulpit Commentary — Matthew — Volume 2 — Section 646

sin. One sin forces a tnan (or seems to force him) to commit another; each wilful sin slrongthens the grasp of Satan upon hie soul, and brir,gs him nearer to that awful state when repentance becomes impoeeible. Let us bewarEJ, and take heed to ourselves. 3. The conduct of the soldiers. They did as they were taught, Interest and fear com- bined to make them the willing tools of the chief priests. The priests bribed them largely, and the soldiers were absolutely in their power. If the priests accused them of neglect of duty, they must have been condemned; their only chance of escape seemed to coincide with their interest; so they took the money offered them, and repeated the falsehood which the chief priests put into their mouths. 4. The accept- ance of the stwy. It was commonly reported among the Jews. But it is a manifest falsehood; it is encompassed with all manner of improbabilities. The soldiers, if they had slept, could not have known what bad happened. The disciples, terror-stricken as they were, could not have dared to attempt to break open the tomb. They did not wish to remove the sacred body; it had been laid in an honoured grave. Their only wish was to render the last offices of love and reverence. If they had removed it, what would have been the value of a dead body to them? Could a dead body have kindled that zeal, that intense enthusiasm, which urged them to forsake home and all earthly comforts for the love of Christ? Would they have embraced a life of hardship and constant danger, with the almost certain prospect of violent death, for the sake of preaching a lie? It is impossible that zealous, self-denying men like the apostles, could have been impostors; it is impossible that men who wrote what they wrote-simple, artless records, full of indications of truthfulness, full also of little differences which show that there could have been no concert, no collusion; or letters of Christian coun- sel beautiful in their transparent simplicity, full of high, holy, hea,enly teaching, such as the world had never heard before--it is simply inconceivable that such men should have invented a lie, should have suffered, should have died, for what they knew to be false. But perhaps no one maintains this incredible hypothesis now. Then could they have been deceived by others? Who could have deceived them? Whose interest was it? Who could have wished to deceive them? Could they have deceived themselves as to the Lord's resurrection? Did they so treasure in their hearts their Master's pro- mise? Did they so constantly expect to see him again? Did they look for his reap- pearing so eagerly that they imagined that they saw his form and hear<l his words? Did they in honest enthusiasm unconsciously create supposed appearances of the Lord out of the lightning's flash, or the uncertain moonlight, or the thousand causes which have from time to time deceived honest men? But the Scripture narratives, artless and truthful as they are, completely exclude this hypothesis. The disciples had forgotten the Lord's promise, or had wholly lost faith in it ; they regarded him as dead, as lost to them. Two of them had laid him in the tomb, and had closed it with a great stone. The women were preparing to anoint the body. None of them had any expectation of seeing the Lord again. Even the empty tomb, strange as it may seem to us, did not at once suggest the Resurrection. St. John, indeed, believed when he went into the sepulchre; in the sepulchre itself, in the home of death, he saw by faith the victory over death. But it seems doubtful whether St. Peter even then realized the truth of the Lord's resurrection. A.nd certainly the absence of the body brought sorrow, not joy, to Mary Magdalene. She stood at the sepulchre weeping, and that because, as she said, she knew not where the body of the Lord was laid; her one wish was to recover those loved remains, and, it seems, to remove them to a grave where they might lie in peace (John xx. 6-15). Thank God, the central fact of Christianity rests on the surest historical evidence. The great Christian Church has not risen out of a. drenm, a vision. The greatest moral and spiritual revolution which the world has ever seen was not the work of a few honest but unintelligent and easily misled enthusiasts. Nothing but the truth of the resurrection of the Lord can account for the immense and sudden change from the deepest despondency to the most wonder- ful zeal and joy and courage and endurance. Nothing but the presence of the risen, living Lord can account for that strong conviction, that dauntless energy, that sus- tained persevering labour, which overcame ell the superstitions of heathenism, ell the inertness of religious scepticism, ell the mighty power of Rome, and went on conquer- ing and to conquer till the victorious eagles bowed before the mightier er~ and kings and emperors bent the knee in worship of the Crucified. 652 THE GOSPEL AOOORDING TO ST. MATTHEW, [an. :n.v1u. 1-20.