SERMON XV. THE RETURN FROM THE SEPULCHRE. ST. JOHN Xx. 10. Then the disciples went away again unto their own home. XV. THESE words close the Gospel for Easter Day. SERMON Viewed even historically, they are full of interest. The contrast between the two disciples as they awoke that morning and as they slept that night, as they ran to the sepulchre and as they returned from it, is one which we cannot think of without emotion. That sudden change, from the darkness of sorrow and disbelief and self-reproach; from the state of one who has lost his best friend and never expects to see him again in this world, and not only so, but who in parting with him has to remember that his own unkindness, his own desertion, aggravated the pain of death and must for ever embitter the remembrance of the separation; to that of one who has had the evidence of his own senses that the tomb is deserted, that the dead friend is living, that all his words which told of XV. SERMON resurrection, however unintelligible, however incredible, at the time, were intended literally and have literally been fulfilled, so that now it is not too much to hope that even on earth there may yet be converse, there may yet be reunion, and at all events that the hope of redemption which had been awakened by years of intercourse and companionship with him was no fable, no delusion, but a real and certain truth; this change, this transition, from darkness to light, from sorrow to joy, from despair to confidence, has ever been a delightful subject of Christian meditation, and is here brought within the compass of ten short verses and presented to our view as a topic most suitable to that great commemoration to which this holy day is consecrated. But, if interesting and attractive as the record of a historical fact, as suggesting the idea of an unspeakable joy vouchsafed long ages ago to Christ's first disciples, does not the same verse which has just been read to you speak also to us and of us as those who have been permitted once again to celebrate the anniversary of His Resurrection, and are now about to return from it to the various homes and to the various occupations in which and amidst which it has pleased God that our earthly life should be spent? The disciples then went away again unto their own home. They went, we know, with hopes revived and hearts comforted. They went, to expect further com XV. munications from Him whom they now know to be SERMON alive from the dead. They went to recall to mind the words which He had so lately spoken, but to which they had listened at the time with hearts so deaf that it was as if they had never heard them. They went, to talk one to another of the things which had happened. They went, to give thanks to God for all that they had been permitted to hear and to see of their Divine Master, and to try to carry out in their daily lives the instructions which He had given and the example which He had set them. I will not attempt an elaborate subdivision of the subject which I desire to-night to press upon you. But I would show you how just and how forcible an application the text has to our own circumstances. I would ponder with you the senses in which we may be said to-night to resemble the disciples here spoken of as returning from the sight of the deserted sepulchre, which was to them the assurance of Christ's life after death, to their several homes and occupations, with feelings so much altered from anything they had known before. 1. Let me say then, first of all, that we ought to return to our homes and to our occupations with hopes revived and hearts comforted. The fact of Christ's resurrection is not indeed a again, all of us, in our T XV. SERMON again from the dead. But it is wisely ordered, in our Church, that the separate truths of Christ's doctrine, the successive steps, if I may so express it, of Christ's redemption, should be presented to us every year one by one, for distinct and definite contemplation, as well as that they should all be always recognized, always commemorated, in their aggregate and combination, whenever we come together on the commonest occasion for the purposes of prayer and praise. And we miss a great blessing, when we allow either indolence or self-will to deprive us of this separate contemplation of the several events of His life, and more particularly of the several stages of that progress by which He passed through humiliation to glory. Our minds are so constituted, and, we may add, the method of our redemption is so arranged, that we ought to view each part in its turn singly and separately, as well as the whole work, at other times, in its object, its combination, and its result. To-day then the part of the truth which has been presented to us thus distinctly is the resurrection of Christ: the fact, the simple yet marvellous fact, that, after really dying, by that death which we have looked upon during the past week in its circumstances and in its details; after being buried in a particular place and before several witnesses; after lying in the state of death, His tomb guarded and watched, through a portion of three days, by those who were interested to XV. prevent the removal of the body by any secret or SERMON collusive means; and after passing, as to His soul, into that condition, whatever it be, which men's souls pass into when separated from the body; a condition expressed in our Creed by the words, He descended into hell, that is, into Hades, into the place or the state of departed spirits between death and resurrection; the fact, I say, that, after these realities of death, burial, and sojourn in the Paradise of the departed, He did rise again out of death; His soul returned to the lifeless body, and He became again a living man, invested with that transformed, that immortal body, which dieth no more, which needs no more the things which are necessary to the life of this world, but is ready to take its place above in the everlasting presence of God. This is the fact which has been presented to us today. And now can we go away again to our own homes, like the first disciples, with hearts comforted by this faith in Christ risen? Why are we here to-night? Why have we taken part in the services of this day? Why did many of us partake this morning of the Lord's Supper? O surely it has not been as a mere form! Surely it has not been in irreverence: surely not in utter ungodliness, carelessness, or hardness of heart! I know how subtle the tempter is, how capricious are the alternations of feeling, how powerful the workings of sin. But I do not, |