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And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth.-Isaiah liii. 9.

SACRED NARRATIVE.

AND now when the even was come, because it was the Preparation, that is the day before the sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, an honourable counsellor, which also waited for the kingdom of God, came, and went in boldly unto Pilate, and craved the body of Jesus. And Pilate marvelled if he were already dead: and calling unto him the centurion, he asked him whether he had been any while dead. And when he knew it of the centurion, he gave the body to Joseph.-Mark xv. 42-45.

And there came also Nicodemus, which at the first came to Jesus by night, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight. Then took they the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes 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 sepulchre, wherein was never man yet laid. There laid they Jesus therefore [in Joseph's own new tomb, which he had hewn (Luke-in stone) out of a rock] because of the Jews' Preparation-day; for the sepulchre was nigh at hand-John xix. 39-42. And he rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed.Matt. xxvii. 60.

And the women also, which came with him from Galilee, followed after and beheld the sepulchre, and how his body

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was laid. And they returned, and prepared spices and ointments; and rested the sabbath-day according to the commandment.-Luke xxiii. 55, 56.

Now, the next day, that followed the day of the Preparation, the chief priests and Pharisees came together unto Pilate, saying, 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 shall be worse than the first. Pilate said unto them, Ye have a watch: go your way, make it as sure as ye can. So they went, and made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone, and setting a watch.-Matt. xxvii. 62-66.

ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE SACRED NARRATIVE.

O, Saviour, the earth was thine, and the fulness of it; yet, as thou hadst not a house of thine own while thou livedst, so thou hadst not a grave when thou wert dead: Joseph, that rich counsellor, lent thee his, - lent it so as

it should never be restored. Thou tookest it but for awhile; but that little touch of that sacred corpse of thine made it too good for the owner.

O, happy Joseph! thou hadst the honour to be landlord of the Lord of life! How well is thy house-room repaid with a mansion not made with hands, eternal in the heavens! Thy garden and thy tomb were hard by Calvary, where thou couldst not fail of many monitions of thy frailty. How gladly dost thou now resign thy grave to him, in whom thou livest, and who liveth for ever; whose soul is in Paradise, whose Godhead is every

where!

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Thus, purely wrapped and sweetly embalmed, lies the precious body of our Saviour, in Joseph's new vault. Are ye now also at rest, O ye Jewish rulers? Is your malice dead and buried with him? Hath Pilate enough served your envy and revenge? Surely it is but a common hostility that can die; yours surviveth death, and puts you upon a further project: "The chief priests and Pharisees came together unto Pilate, saying, Sir, we remember that this deceiver said, while he was yet alive, After three days I will rise again: command, therefore, that the sepulchre be made sure till the third day, lest his disciples come by night and steal him away, and say unto the people, He is risen!"

How full of terrors and inevitable perplexities is guiltiness! Wicked and foolish Jews! how fain would ye fight against God and your own hearts! How gladly would ye deceive yourselves in believing him to be a deceiver, whom your consciences knew to be no less true than powerful! Lazarus was still in your eye. That man was no phantasm. His death,

his reviving, was undeniable. The so fresh resuscitation of that dead body, after four days' dissolution, was a manifestation of Omnipotence. How do ye vainly wish that he could deceive you in the fore-reporting of his own resurrection! Without a divine power, he could have raised neither Lazarus nor himself; with and by it he could as well raise himself as Lazarus.

And now what must be done? The sepulchre must be secured, and you with it. A huge stone, a strong guard, must do the deed; and that stone must be sealed, that guard of your own designing. Methinks I hear the soldiers and busy officers, how they boasted of their valour and vigilance, and said they would make him safe from either rising or stealing. Oh! the madness of impotent men, that think by either wile or force to frustrate the will and designs of the Almighty!

All this while the devout Marys keep close, and silently spend their Sabbath in a mixture of grief and hope. How did they wear out those sad hours in bemoaning themselves each to other; in mutual relations of the patient sufferings, of the happy expiration, of their Saviour, of the wonderful events, both in the heavens and earth, that accompanied his crucifixion, — of his frequent and clear predictions of his resurrection! BISHOP HALL.

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After the crucifixion of our Lord, follows the account of his burial by Joseph of Arimathea, who went to Pilate and begged the body of Jesus; and having obtained it, wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out of the rock; and he rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed. On this I shall make no other observation than that it was the exact fulfilment of a prophecy in Isaiah, where, speaking of the promised Messiah, or Christ, it is said, “He shall make his grave with the rich" (Isai. liii. 9): and accordingly Joseph, we are told, was a rich man and an honourable counsellor.

We see that the chief priests used every possible precaution to prevent a fraud; for this purpose they went to Pilate to beg for a guard, immediately after our Lord was buried. It is indeed here said, that they went the next day that followed the day of Preparation, the day on which Jesus was crucified. This looks, at the first view, as if the sepulchre had remained one whole night without a guard; but this was not so. The chief priests went to Pilate as soon as the sun was set on Friday, the day of the Preparation and crucifixion, for then began the following day, or Saturday, as the Jews always began to reckon their day from the preceding evening. They had a guard therefore as soon as they possibly could, after the body was deposited in the sepulchre and one cannot help admiring the wisdom of Providence in so disposing events, that the extreme anxiety of these men to prevent collusion should be the means of adding the testimony of sixty unexceptionable witnesses, the number of the Roman soldiers on guard, to the truth of the resurrection, and of establishing the reality of it beyond all power of contradiction. It is only necessary to add on this head, that the circumstance of sealing the stone was a precaution of

which several instances occur in ancient times, particularly in the prophecy of Daniel, where we read, that when Daniel was thrown into the den of lions, a stone was brought and laid upon the mouth of the den, and the king sealed it with his own signet, and with the signet of his lords, that the purpose might not be changed concerning Daniel.

BISHOP PORteus.

Joseph of Arimathea went to Pilate, begged the body of Jesus, and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth. The Jews, as well as the Egyptians, added spices to keep the body from putrefaction, and the linen was wrapped about every part to keep the aromatics in contact with the flesh. From John xix. 39, 40, we learn that a mixture of myrrh and aloes of one hundred pounds' weight had been applied to the body of Jesus when he was buried: and that a second embalmment was intended, we learn from Luke xxiii. 56; xxiv. 1, as the hurry to get the body interred before the sabbath did not permit them to complete the embalming in the first instance.

He laid it in his own new tomb. To all human appearance, the body of Christ must have had the same burial-place with those of the two robbers, as he was numbered with the transgressors, and, according to a prophecy delivered nearly seven hundred years before that time, he is to have the burying-place of a rich man (see Isai. liii. 9-11). Had our Lord been buried in the common burial-ground of the malefactors, his resurrection could not have been so distinctly remarked, as the chief priests would never have thought of sealing the stone there, or setting a watch; but now that the body is got into the hands of a friend, they judge it necessary to make use of these precautions, in order, as they said, to prevent imposture; and, from this very circumstance the resurrection of Christ had its fullest evidence, and was put beyond the power of successful contradiction. What a number of objections would not human prudence have made to Joseph's conduct, had he consulted it on this occasion! It would have represented to him, that "this was to expose himself,—to bring himself into trouble,— to render himself suspected, to put himself out of all capacity of doing good, to ruin himself irrevocably; and, now, it could do no good to his teacher, he is now dead, and needs no longer any office of kindness from men." There is sometimes in our whole life but one opportunity in which God designs signally to employ us; and, through our general backwardness to every good work, we are for reserving ourselves to opportunities, in which God neither requires nor will accept our services.

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They (the priests) made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone and setting a watch. The guard was to take care that the disciples should not steal away; and the seal, which was probably the seal of the governor, was to prevent the guards from being corrupted so as to permit the theft. everything was done which human policy and prudence could, to prevent a resurrection, a resurrection which these very precautions had the most direct tendency to authenticate and establish. How wonderful are the wisdom and goodness of God! - and how true is it, that there is neither might nor counsel against Him! DR. ADAM CLARKE.

How can the ancient predictions be fulfilled? Where shall "he make his grave, with the wicked or with the rich, in his death" (Isai. liii. 1,) of crucifixion? By the providence of Him who did foretel it, it shall be fulfilled. To rescue the body of our blessed Saviour from the malicious hands of those who caused his crucifixion, ❝ there came a rich man of Arimathea, named Joseph, who went in boldly unto Pilate, and besought him that he might take away the body of Jesus." Beside, "there came also Nicodemus, a man of the Pharisees, a ruler of the Jews, and brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pound weight. Then took they the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes, with the spices, as the manner of the Jews is to bury." Thus was the burial of the Son of God performed according to the custom of the people of God.

As for fulfilling the custom of the Jews as to the preparation in respect of his body, we find the spices and the linen clothes. When "there came a woman having an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard, very precious, and she broke the box, and poured it on his head," Christ made this interpretation of that action: "She is come beforehand to anoint my body to the burying."Mark xiv. 3-8. When Christ was risen, "Mary Magdalene and the other Mary brought the spices which they had prepared, that they might come and anoint him.—Mark xvi. 1—Luke xxiv. 1. Thus was there an interpreted and an intended unction of our Saviour, but really and actually he was interred with the spices which Nicodemus brought. The custom of wrapping in the clothes we see in Lazarus rising from the grave; for "he came forth bound hand and foot with grave-clothes, and his face was bound about with a napkin." -John xi. 44. In the same manner, when our Saviour was risen, "Simon Peter went into the sepulchre, and saw the linen clothes lie, and the napkin that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself." xx. 6, 7. Thus, according to the custom of the Jews, was the body of Christ bound in several linen clothes with an aromatical composition, and so prepared for the sepulchre.

As for the preparation of the sepulchre to receive the body of our Saviour, the custom of the Jews was also punctually observed in that. Joseph of Arimathea had prepared a place of burial for himself, and the manner of it is expressed: for "in the place where he was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new sepulchre, wherein never man was laid, which Joseph had hewn out of a rock for his own tomb: there laid they Jesus, and rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre," and so Christ was buried after the manner of the Jews, in a vault made by the excavation of the rocky firm part of the earth, and that vault secured from external injury by a great massy stone rolled to the mouth or door thereof. After which stone was once rolled thither, the whole funeral action was performed, and the sepulture completed: so that it was not lawful by the custom of the Jews any more to open the sepulchre, or disturb the interred body.

Two eminent persons did concur unto the burial of our Saviour, a ruler and a counsellor, men of those orders among the Jews as were of the

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