THE DAY OF THE RESURRECTION. OUR Lord was buried before sunset upon Friday evening. His body lay in the tomb during Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. The third day began after sunset on Saturday evening. Some time during the beginning of the third day, (our Sabbath,) probably immediately before sunrise, there was a great earthquake, and the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it. "His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow; and for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men." Our Lord arose in the presence of the angels only. But there was no confusion or haste, but order and peace within the sepulchre. The linen clothes which were about His body were laid by themselves, and the napkin which was about His head was wrapped together in a place by itself. Immediately after the resurrection, and before any of the disciples went to the sepulchre, the Roman watch had gone to the city, and shewed unto the chief priests all that was done. Very early in the morning, when the sun was about to rise, but while it was yet twilight, some of the women who had been present at the crucifixion,-Mary Magdalene, Mary mother of James, Salome, Joanna, and a few others whose names are not mentioned,-went to the sepulchre with the spices which they had prepared. On their way they questioned among themselves how they should remove the stone, "for it was great," and get access to the body of Jesus. But on arriving at the sepulchre, they found the stone rolled away, which greatly perplexed them. They entered the sepulchre, and at once saw that the body of Jesus was not there, on which it is probable that Mary Magdalene immediately ran off to the city to tell Peter and John, who seem to have lived in a different quarter from the rest of the disciples. But while the other women remained in the sepulchre, not knowing what to think, there suddenly appeared two angels in shining garments. The women were afraid, and bowed their faces to the earth; but they said, “Be not affrighted; ye seek Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified. Why seek ye the living among the dead? He is not here; He is risen. Come see the place where the Lord lay. Remember how He spake unto you when He was yet in Galilee, saying, The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again. Go quickly, and tell His disciples and Peter that He is risen from the dead; and, behold, He goeth before you into Galilee; there ye shall see Him, as He said unto you. Lo, I have told you.” The women went out quickly and fled from the sepulchre with "great joy," yet "trembling and amazed,” and ran to tell the disciples all they had seen and heard. While on their way to the city, Jesus himself met them, and said, "All hail !" and they held Him by the feet and worshipped him. Jesus said to them, "Be not afraid; go tell my brethren that they go into Galilee, and there they shall see me." The women told the news to the disciples; but their words seemed to them as idle tales, and they believed them not. In the meantime, Mary Magdalene had found Peter and John, and informed them of the disappearance of the body, and the rolling away of the stone. The two disciples instantly hasten with all speed to the sepulchre, from which the other women had departed. John outran Peter, and first reached the sepulchre, where, stooping down, he saw the linen clothes lying, but did not himself enter. Peter came up and entered in, and also saw the order in which everything was laid. John then also entered, and seeing that the body was away, and had evidently not been hastily removed, as if by enemies, and could not have been removed by friends; and remembering now what Christ himself had foretold, he believed in His resurrection. The two . disciples then went away "wondering in distance of about seven or eight miles. themselves at what was come to pass." They talked and "reasoned" about all But Mary Magdalene, who had followed the things which had recently happened them to the sepulchre, remained there in Jerusalem, and were, visibly, sorrowalone after their departure. She stood ful. Suddenly they were joined by one without weeping. As yet she had not whom they knew not,-who asked them heard of His resurrection, or seen any what was the subject of their conversavision of angels; but, on stooping down tion, and the cause of their sadness? and looking into the sepulchre, she saw Their hearts are full with but one theme, two angels, one at the head and the other and so they, in turn, inquired if He was at the feet, where the body of Jesus lay. such a stranger in Jerusalem as not to They said to her, "Woman, why weepest know the things with which the whole thou?" She said to them, "Because city was ringing? The stranger said, they have taken away my Lord, and I" What things ?"-when they tell Him know not where they have laid Him." about Jesus of Nazareth, a prophet As she spoke these words she turned mighty in deed and word before God round and saw some one near her, whom and all the people; how the rulers envied she supposed to be the keeper of the Him; how His disciples trusted that it garden. He, too, asks why she weeps; was He who should restore the kingdom and she still makes the same reply, and to Israel; and how they had heard strange implores him only to tell her where the reports that morning of His having been body is, if he had borne it away. A alive. But the stranger was not ignorsingle word, uttered in the old familiar ant of the things which had come to pass tones, banished doubt and sorrow, and in Jerusalem. He rebuked them for their restored confidence and joy,-" Mary!" unbelief, and said, “O fools, and slow of She exclaimed, "Rabboni!" or, "My heart to believe all that the prophets have dearest master!" and fell at His feet to written! Ought not the Christ to have worship Him. Not unlikely, she was suffered these things, and to enter into under the false impression that He was His glory? And beginning at Moses and now come to fulfil the promise made on all the prophets, He expounded unto the Passover evening, of "returning them in all the Scriptures the things conagain" to His disciples; and the hoped, cerning himself." Their hearts burned perhaps, that now was to commence His within them! A new light began to reign on earth. But Jesus said to her, beam upon their minds! They reached "Touch me not. I am not yet ascended Emmaus towards evening; and, anxious to my Father; but go to my brethren, to prolong an intercourse so peculiarly and say unto them, I ascend to my Fa- delightful, they ask the stranger to rether and your Father, and to my God main with them, and to share their hosand your God!" Mary, in obedience to pitality. He, accordingly, entered their the command of her Master, went im- dwelling. Food was set before Him. mediately to the disciples. She found He took bread, and blessed it, and broke them mourning and weeping. But when it, and gave it to them. Their eyes were they heard that Jesus who was crucified opened! They knew Him! It is the was alive, and had been seen by Mary, Lord! He vanishes out of their sight! the news yet seemed too good to be true, and they believed her not! Some time during the afternoon of this day the Lord appeared to Peter, (1 Cor. xv. 5; Luke xxiv. 34;) but where and how this interview took place, we are not informed. In the evening, two disciples, one of them named Cleopas, were walking from Jerusalem to the village of Emmaus, a Full of joy and wonder, the disciples returned, that night, to Jerusalem, and entered the room where the eleven were assembled. The moment they entered they were saluted with the joyful intelligence, "The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared unto Simon!" They contributed to the common joy by narrating what had just happened to themselves. While they thus spoke, Jesus himself appeared in the midst of them! Terror seized them as on that night when He approached their vessel during the storm walking on the waves of the sea. Now, as then, they thought it was some dread apparition from the world of spirits. But now, as then, Jesus calms their fears, and said, "Peace be unto you!"-why are ye troubled? why do thoughts arise in your hearts? Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have." And they believed not from very joy! But He ate before them, and opened their understanding, that they might understand the Scriptures; while He reminded them of the words He had often spoken to them, and shewed them how it was written that He should suffer, and rise from the dead, and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached to all nations. He then commissioned them to go to all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature; but to remain in Jerusalem until they received, in full, the promise of the Father, and were endued with power from on high. When He said this He breathed upon them, and bestowed an earnest of the Spirit, saying, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost!" And so ended the day of the Resurrection,-the first Lord's day of the New Dispensation! PAUL AT ATHENS. [(Continued from page 16.) But in order to understand Paul's | must have appeared to the Stoics irraaddress, we must direct our attention to tional. the philosophy of the Athenians as well as to their religion. The biographer of St. Paul, however, has to speak only of these schools which argued with the apostle, (verse 18,)-viz:— THE STOICS AND EPICUREANS. Pantheism. "The Stoics were Pantheists; and much of their language is a curious anticipation of the phraseology of modern In their view, God was merely the Spirit or Reason of the Universe. The world was itself a rational soul, producing all things out of itself, and resuming them all to itself again. Matter was inseparable from the Deity. He did not create; He only organized. He merely impressed law and order on the substance, which was, in fact, himself. The manifestation of the Universe was only a period in the development of God. In conformity with these notions of the world, which substitute a sublime destiny for the belief in a personal Creator and Preserver, were the notions which were held concerning the soul, and its relation to the body. The soul was, in fact, corporeal. The Stoics said, that at death it would be burnt, or return to be absorbed in God. Thus, a resurrection from the dead, in the sense in which the Gospel has revealed it, "If the Stoics were Pantheists, the Epicureans were virtually Atheists. Their philosophy was a system of materialism, in the strictest sense of the word; in their view, the world was formed by an accidental concourse of atoms, and was not in any sense created, or even modified, by the Divinity. They did indeed profess a certain belief in what were called gods; but these equivocal divinities were merely phantoms,-impressions on the popular mind,-dreams, which had no objective reality, or at least exercised no active influence on the physical world, or the business of life. The Epicurean deity, if self-existent at all, dwelt apart, in serene indifference to all the affairs of the universe. The universe was a great accident, and sufficiently explained itself without any reference to a higher power." Such were the two schools which Paul encountered in THE AGORA. "Thus St. Paul found philosophers at Athens among those whom he addressed in the Agora. This, as we have seen, was the common meeting-place of a population always eager for fresh subjects of intellectual curiosity. Dernosthenes had rebuked the Athenians for this idle tendency four centuries before, telling them that they were always craving after news and excitement, at the very moment when destruction was impending over their liberties. And they are described in the same manner, on the occasion of St. Paul's visit, as giving their whole leisure to telling and hearing something newer than the latest news. Among those who sauntered among the planetrees of the Agora, and gathered in knots under the porticos, eagerly discussing the questions of the day, were philosophers, in the garb of their several sects, ready for any new question, on which they might exercise their subtlety, or display their rhetoric. Among the other philosophers, the Stoics and Epicureans would more especially be encountered; for the Painted Porch of Zeno was in the Agora itself, and the Garden' of the rival sect was not far distant. To both these classes of hearers and talkers-both the mere idlers and the professors of philosophy-any question connected with a new religion was peculiarly welcome; for Athens gave a ready acceptance to all superstitions and ceremonies, and was glad to find food for credulity or scepticism, ridicule or debate. To this motley group of the Agora, St. Paul made known the two great subjects he had proclaimed from city to city. He spoke aloud of Jesus and the Resurrection, of that Name which is above every name,—that consummation which awaits all the generations of men who have successively passed into the sleep of death. He was in the habit of conversing 'daily' on these subjects with those whom he met. His varied experience of men, and his familiarity with many modes of thought, enabled him to present these subjects in such a way as to arrest attention. As regards the philosophers, he was providentially prepared for his collision with them. It was not the first time he had encountered them. His own native city was a city of philosophers, and was especially famous (as we have remarked before) for a long line of eminent Stoics, and he was doubtless familiar with their language and opinions." Different impressions were produced by Paul's words. Some (probably the Epicureans) said he was a babbler, and received him with ridicule; while others (the Stoics) were anxious to hear of the new "daemons" whom he was calling upon them to worship. They therefore took him to the hill of Areopagus, where the court of judicature sat to condemn criminals, and to decide the most solemn questions connected with religion. We hardly think, however, that there was in this case any trial. The whole narrative leads us to imagine, that curiosity was the motive of the whole proceeding; and that they adjourned from the Agora (market-place) to Mar's Hill, as being more convenient, and more appropriate for listening to PAUL'S ADDRESS TO THE ATHENIANS. 6 the first planting of Christianity which "There is no point in the annals of seizes so powerfully on the imagination of those who are familiar with the history of the ancient world. Whether we contrast the intense earnestness of the man who spoke, with the frivolous character of those who surrounded him,-or compare the certain truth, and awful meaning of the Gospel he revealed, with the worthless polytheism which had made Athens a proverb in the earth,—or even think of the mere words uttered that day in the clear atmosphere, on the summit of Mars' Hill in connexion with the objects of art, temples, statues, and altars, which stood round on every side,-we feel that the moment was, and was intended to be, full of the most impressive teaching for every age of the world. Close to the spot where he stood was the Temple of Mars. The sanctuary of the Eumenides was immediately below him; the Parthenon of Minerva facing him above. Their presence seemed to challenge the assertion in which he declared here, that in TEMPLES made with hands the Deity does not dwell. In front of him, towering from its pedestal on the rock of the Acropolis,Colossus, which at this day, with outstretched hand, gives its benediction to the low village of Arona; or as the brazen statue of the armed angel, which from the summit of the Castel S. Angelo spreads its wings over the city of Rome, -was the bronze Colossus of Minerva, armed with spear, shield, and helmet, as the champion of Athens. Standing almost beneath its shade, he pronounced that the Deity was not to be likened either to that, the work of Phidias, or to other forms in gold, silver, or stone, graven by art, and man's device, which peopled the scene before him,' Wherever his eye was turned, it saw a succession of such statues and buildings in every variety of form and situation. On the rocky ledges on the south side of the Acropolis, and in the midst of the hum of the Agora, described. And in the northern parts of were the objects of devotion' already the city, which are equally visible from the Areopagus, on the level spaces, and -as the Borromean on every eminence, were similar objects, to which we have made no allusion,and especially that Temple of Theseus, the national hero, which remains in unimpaired beauty, to enable us to imagine what Athens was when this temple was only one among the many ornaments of that city which was wholly given to idolatry."" In this scene Paul spoke, probably, in his wonted attitude-stretching out his hand-his bodily aspect still shewing that he had suffered from weakness, toil, and pain. The speech, too, (which we beg our readers, before going further, carefully to peruse,) is a masterpiece. His position was one of great nicety. Had he openly attacked the national gods, his situation would have been one of great danger; but he avoids the difficulty, nay, he makes it a road to the convictions of his hearers. He seeks to draw them away from polytheism, by telling them that he was making known to them that God whom they were ignorantly endeavouring to worship. He tells them that he had seen an altar bearing a certain inscription; and taking this inscription as his text, he addressed them in the words of eternal wisdom. For a time they listened, until he began to speak to them of the resurrection, when some began to mock him; others, in the spirit of Felix, said, that they would hear him again on the matter. Thus the assembly broke up, and Paul was dismissed. ence; and that one God is the common Father of all nations of the earth. For the general and more ignorant population, some of whom were doubtless listening, a word of approbation is bestowed on the care they gave to the highest of all concerns; but they are admonished that idolatry degrades all worship, and leads men away from true notions of the Deity. ative class of hearers, who delighted in That more educated and more imaginthe diversified mythology, that personified the operations of nature, and localadorned by poetry and art, are led from ized the divine presence in sanctuaries the thought of their favourite shrines and customary sacrifices, to views of that awful Being who is the Lord of heaven and earth, and the one Author of universal life. Up to a certain point in philosopher of the Garden, as well as of this high view of the Supreme Being, the the Porch, might listen with wonder and admiration. It soared, indeed, high above the vulgar religion; but in the lofty and serene Deity, who disdained to dwell in the earthly temple, and needed curean might almost suppose that he nothing from the hand of man, the Epiheard the language of his own teacher. But the next sentence, which asserted the providence of God as the active, creative energy,-as the conservative, the ruling, the ordaining principle,-annihilated at once the atomic theory, and the government of blind chance, to which Epicurus ascribed the origin and preservation of the universe.' And when the Stoic heard the apostle say that we Deity without the intervention of earthly ought to rise to the contemplation of the objects, and that we live, and move, and have our being in Him-it might have seemed like an echo of his own thoughtuntil the proud philosopher learnt that it was no pantheistic diffusion of power and order of which the apostle spoke, but a living centre of government and lovethat the world was ruled, not by the iron necessity of Fate, but by the providence of a personal God-and that from the "We cannot fail to notice how the proudest philosopher, repentance and sentences of this interrupted speech are meek submission were sternly exacted. constructed to meet the cases in succes. Above all, we are called upon to notice sion of every class of which the audience how the attention of the whole audience is was composed. Each word in the ad- concentered at the last upon JESUS CHRIST, dress is adapted at once to win and to though His name is not mentioned in the rebuke. The Athenians were proud of whole speech. Before St. Paul was taken everything that related to the origin of to the Areopagus, he had been preaching their race, and the home where they Jesus and the resurrection;' and though dwelt. St. Paul tells them that he was his discourse was interrupted, this was struck by the aspect of their city; but the last impression he left on the minds he shews them that the place and the of those who heard him. And the imtime appointed for each nation's existence pression was such as not merely to exare parts of one great scheme of Provid-cite or gratify an intellectual curiosity, But the apostle's labours were not fruitless; some believed. The following remarks characterize THE NATURE AND RESULTS OF PAUL'S ADDRESS. |