was embalmed at the expense of his friends, and then laid to rest in another man's tomb. (2.) It was a tomb hewn out of the rock. There were no concealed passages in the earth, through which the body could have been removed. (3.) It was a new tomb-one in which no man had ever been laid. Joseph belonged to a provincial town. His father was not buried in Jerusalem. But he, having risen to distinction, being now a member of the Sanhedrim, and residing in Jerusalem, has prepared himself a tomb. And Providence so orders all this that no suspicion could arise about the identity of our Lord's person when He arose from the dead, or any one be able to say that it was some other person who had risen in his place, or that he had arisen by virtue of having touched the bones of some old prophet who had been buried there before him, after the example of the case spoken of in 2 Kings xiii. 21. (4.) It was a new tomb in a garden—which, among the Jews, was often the case. You remember our Lord's last passion of the bloody sweat began in a garden—so his humiliation was concluded in a garden, and thence He rose to glory. The sepulchre, says Burkitt, was in a garden, to expiate Adam's sin committed in a garden; as by the sin of the first Adam we were driven out of Paradise, the garden of delights and heaven-like pleasures; so by the sufferings of the second Adam, the Lord from heaven, our Mediator, who lay buried in a garden, we may hope to gain a joyful entrance into the Heavenly Paradise itself. And well may we ask, where else could He have been buried with more propriety than in a garden, who, like Aaron's rod, was to bud forth again on the third day, and to whose death, burial, and resurrection it is owing that our bodies shall again, like reviving grass, come forth from the earth? So Witsius. (5.) Our Lord's tomb was near the place of the crucifixion, in the immediate neighborhood of the place of the punishment

of convicted persons, so that he did indeed make hist grave with the wicked-that is, surrounded by them and among them, though not of them. The words, therefore: "He rose again from the dead," are emphatic-they do not mean that He had risen once before, and that this was the second time He rose from the dead. They are intended to express that it was He himself who rose the very same soul and body-the same soul that he committed to God when He gave up the ghost on the cross-entered again into the very same body that had hung on the cross, and had been embalmed and laid in Joseph's new tomb; that his reasonable soul and true body were actually united again. The saints who rose out of their graves at his resurrection received new bodies, for their old ones had decayed; but our Lord's body did not see corruption. His body was truly dead. His soul was altogether and completely out of his body. The separation between his body and soul was as complete as between the body and soul of a believer now at death; but there was no dissolution of his body in the sense of decay, or of the separation of its constituent elements. His body was saved from the first or faintest approach of putrefaction. For as Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit, and suffered only in so far as He was our Surety, and as the work of atonement was completed when the sacrifice was made, and He himself said, "It is finished, and gave up the ghost;" so it was not possible for His body to be holden in the grave so as to see corruption. There was none of Adam's sin resting on it, nor was the guilt of any actual transgression found in all His life. He was holy, harmless, the innocent Son of God. The honor of his burial, after his death, with the rich, is ascribed by the Prophet to his immaculate character: "Because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth." Isa. liii. 9. There were causes proper and natural to retard the work

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of corruption, such as the embalming with the precious spices, but doubtless as far as necessary it was the effect of miraculous or supernatural power. For in addition to the reason just intimated, that as his sufferings were now at an end-the penalty ceasing with his death—and as he knew no sin, neither original nor actual; so there was nothing in His body that corruption could seize on. And besides, it was necessary also that His body should not see corruption, by being turned into dust, so that its identity might be so clearly seen that no doubt could be raised on that point.

III. The third particular affirmed is that He rose the third day, on which I need not dwell long. In Matt. xii. 40, our Lord said to the Scribes and Pharisees, who demanded of Him a sign, that no sign should be given to them "but the sign of the Prophet Jonas; For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." Here it is to be observed,

1. The history of Jonas was then known to the Jews.

2. It was received by them as a true history. Our Lord appeals to it as both genuine and authentic. And,

3. The Prophet Jonas was in this matter a type of our Lord's burial and resurrection.*

Now three days and nights, according to Hebrew reckoning, means any part of two days having two nights and one whole day between them. This mode of compu

* See VIIIth Discourse.

ting time prevails still in the East. When travelling in Bible Lands, I was frequently put in quarantine for three days and nights, as at Hebron and Smyrna—the meaning of which was, that I was hurried off to the quarantine grounds just before sunset, kept there the following night, next day, and the following night, and then next morning at sunrise discharged, as having fulfilled my quarantine of three days and three nights, not forgetting the backshish. That this is the true view of the Jewish mode of computing time is seen conclusively in the circumcision of a child, which you know was to be on the eighth day, but any unexpired portion of the day of the child's birth, however short, was reckoned as one of the entire days, and circumcision was performed on the eighth day, that is, upon the day week from birth-the eight days including the first and the last. Bishop Pearson illustrates the Hebrew usage by the third day ague, which is so called, though there be but one day's intermission between the paroxysms thereof, and hence, to make it tertian, the first and third days are both included in the computation. There are instances in the Bible also in which it is clearly seen that eight days mean only six full days, counting the fragment of the day at the beginning of the reckoning and the fragment of the day at its close, which, being held as two days, make the eight. In our Lord's resurrection the facts are thus: He was crucified and buried on the day of preparation for the Jewish Paschal Sabbath, which is our Friday. His body was laid in a tomb before sunset on Friday, which was counted by the Jews as one day. He remained in the tomb that night and all the following day and night, which was the Jewish Sabbath, and answers to our Saturday. Then early the next day, which was the first day of the Jewish week, and answers to our Lord's day, He rose again from the dead.

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And thus were fulfilled the Scriptures and His own promise kept. The third day, on which He rose, is our Sabbath. The learned Witsius adds here, and elaborates it with his usual eloquence, that our Lord's resurrection was in the Spring of the year, which he considers an emblem. This is an accommodation I do not fancy.

IF, THEN, it is still asked, Why did our Lord continue three days, and but three days, according to Jewish reckoning, in the grave? Our answer is,

1. So much depended upon His resurrection, that sufficient space between His death and resurrection was given, that every reasonable and proper proof might be furnished of the reality of His death.

2. But he did not continue under the power of death any longer, because this third day was the time required by the types and our Lord's own prediction for him to rise. The proof, moreover, of His resurrection was more easy and determinate then than it could have been if the time of rising had been prolonged.

And now from this brief review of the Article from a historic point of view, I ask, have we not proofs quite sufficient to demonstrate the truth of this Article, as far as the nature of such a subject admits of demonstration ? First. We hold that the resurrection of Jesus is an Article of Faith resting upon testimony purely historical. Nor is there any defect in the evidence. There is no broken link in the chain. The Scriptures at once and boldly remove the objection that such a thing as the resurrection of the human body is impossible, by ascribing it in our Lord's case, and in every case, directly to the power of God. St. Paul introduces his argument about the resurrection of the human body by declaring that God gives