Fulfilment of

ecy.

prophecy; but how then shall be fulfilled the other part of the same prophecy, that His tomb should be with the rich?

Observe, then, a most unexpected interposition the Proph- of that Divine Being Who has been keeping that ancient prediction bright in His own remembrance ever since Isaiah was gathered to his fathers; and, after having exposed it to almost an infinity of jeopardies during seven hundred years, now brings it out of the chamber of His memory, and once more delicately impinges it on the flight of a few moments; for we are expressly told that the evening had come when the interposition was made. Observe, also, that although it was precisely effected, yet in the incidents by which the accomplishment was brought about, the sharpest eye can detect no trace of aught that approaches what men call supernatural. And now let us try to realize the scene. The sun is swiftly descending. How shall the body of Jesus be rescued from the grave among the wicked, whither frenzied Jews are hurrying to hurl it, and be honorably buried in a rich man's tomb? Shall His disciples find Him a costly sepulchre? But they are poor Galileans, without purse or sword, and their entreaties and tears will have little avail with the infuriate assassins; besides, hours before, even in Gethsemane itself, they had forsaken Jesus and fled. Shall the weeping women who still linger by the cross? But they are too weak to bear Him away, and surely there is no one in that frenzied mob to lend them a helping hand. Ah, help does come to them-help from the most unexpected, im

Matt. xxvi. 56.

probable quarter--from the fiendish Sanhedrim itself, that very Sanhedrim which only this morning has pronounced Jesus guilty of blasphemy, and extorted from Pilate the doom of the cross. When His own chosen apostles who had been openly following Him for three years have cravenly forsaken Him and fled, when a Judas has betrayed Him with a kiss, when a Peter has denied Him with oaths: a Jewish senator, whose name has never been publicly connected with Jesus, and a Jewish rabbi, who had stealthily visited Jesus under cover of night-these become the totally unexpected agents whom the Almighty employs to execute His own prophetic words. The story is best told in the simple language of the sacred narrators.

61.

Mark xv. 42-47.

. 56. John xix. 38-42.

And when the evening was now come, lo, there came a Matt. xxvii. 57rich man of Arimathea, named Joseph, an honorable counsellor, a good and righteous man, who had not consented Luke xxiii. 50to their counsel and deed, who also was waiting for the kingdom of God, being himself a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews; this man, because it was the day before the Sabbath, came and went in boldly unto Pilate, and begged the body of Jesus, that he might take it away. And Pilate marveled if He were already dead; and calling unto him the centurion, he asked whether He had been long dead; and when he knew it of the centurion, he gave the body to Joseph. And having bought fine linen, he came and took down the body of Jesus. And there came also Nicodemus (he who at the first came to Jesus by night), bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pound weight. Then took they the body of Jesus, and wound it in fine linen cloth with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury. Now, in the place where He was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb,

in which no one had ever yet been laid; it was Joseph's own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock. There then, because of the Jews' preparation day, they laid Jesus; for the sepulchre was nigh at hand; and having rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb, they went away. And the women also who had come with Him from Galilee, Mary of Magdala and Mary the mother of Jesus and others, followed after, and, sitting over against the sepulchre, beheld the tomb, where and how His body was laid. And they returned, and prepared spices and ointments.

Was not Isaiah's prediction

His grave was appointed with the wicked,
And His tomb with the rich-

fulfilled to the very letter? And yet on what a multitude of contingencies was this ancient prophecy dependent! Suppose, for instance, that Jesus had suffered under the Jewish law instead of the Roman, having been stoned instead of crucified or suppose that there had been no Joseph rich enough to own a tomb, or bold enough to beg the body of Jesus, or influential enough to prevail on Pilate to grant his request; or suppose that he had been a few minutes later, or that Pilate had refused his entreaty, or that the Jews had learned of Joseph's design and thwarted him, or that the sepulchre had not been near the cross, or that some other untoward circumstance had happened-any of which suppositions is incomparably more probable than the strange blending of dishonor and honor in Isaiah's prediction. Suppose, I say, that any of these things had happened, then the whole fabric of Messianic prophecy would have suffered a fatal shock, or, rather, Jesus the Nazarene, Who

Rev. xix. 10.

The Tomb the

Cradle of

Christ's Hon

claimed for Himself that all Messianic prophecies
centered in His own Person, would have been
proved to be a false claimant-or pseudo-Messiah.
Is not the Spirit of Prophecy the witness of Jesus?
Thus was God's crucified Son, notwithstand-
ing the fell designs of His murderers, allowed
most honorable burial. In fact, His honors be- ors.
gan the moment He died. From that moment
the path of His glorification was onward and up-
ward. The scourgings and buffetings of hate
are exchanged for the tender ministries of love;
the mock robe and scepter and crown for the cost-
ly shroud and myrrh and spice; the cross of dis-
grace for the tomb of honor. What though no
stately bier is there to bear the blessed corse?
Courtly hands are there to bear the sacred head
and feet, and, gently wrapping it in costliest
shroud and spicery, they worshipfully bury their
reverend charge in a new-hewn sepulchre. And
over against it, in the deepening night, still sit
in unutterable grief saintly women who had min-
istered to Him in Galilee. Oh, if ever Love and
Reverence were mourners, and such mourning
be esteemed an homage, never was sepulture so
regal as that of the Man of Sorrows! And meet
it was that He should die and be buried in a gar-
den; for, as it was in a garden that Sin and Death
had been born, so it was in a garden that Sin and
Death died.

Tomb.

But, although the enemies of Jesus are not The Guarded allowed to dishonor the dead body of Him Whom they had murdered, they are allowed to continue their machinations. What though they had seen

John ii. 18-22.

64.

66

Him laid away in the rock-hewn tomb, and the great stone rolled up against the door of the sepulchre? They felt the goadings of a guilty conscience, and so they were afraid even of a dead Jesus. Moreover, they remembered what He Himself many a month before had said to them, in reply to their demand for a sign from Heaven : Destroy this temple, and in three days I will rear it up." They had destroyed the temple, and now they feared that He Whom they had destroyed would rear again the temple in three days. And so on the morning after the sunset burial they Matt. xxvii. 62- hasten to Pilate, and say to him: "Sir, we remember that that deceiver said while He was yet alive, 'After three days I will rise again.' Command, therefore, that the sepulchre be made sure until the third day, lest His disciples come by night and steal Him away, and say unto the people, 'He is risen from the dead.' So the last error will be worse than the first." "Error," then, is it? Yes, better for this haughty, hypocritical, blasphemous hierarchy, notwithstanding all their jealousy and hate of the renowned Rabbi of Nazareth, that He should have still continued alive and taught as of yore, than that He should be crucified and rise again. And so, while the weeping and saintly women from Galilee arrest themselves in their own sacred office of embalming their dead Master in order that they may keep the Sabbath according to the commandment, these chief priests and scribes and elders and Pharisees, these paragons of righteousness who had so often denounced the dead Galilean as a Sabbath-breaker, these men

Luke xxiii. 56.