Part 4 (1/2)
The incidents which accompanied the death of Jesus were even more impressive than those which signalised His birth. When He was in the garden of Gethsemane there appeared unto Him an angel from Heaven strengthening Him. [28:5] During the three concluding hours of His intense anguish on the cross, there was darkness overall the land, [28:6] as if nature mourned along with the ill.u.s.trious sufferer. When He bowed His head on Calvary and gave up the ghost, the event was marked by notifications such as never announced the demise of any of this world's great potentates, for ”the veil of the temple was rent in twain,” and the rocks were cleft asunder, and the graves were opened, and the earth trembled. [29:1] ”The centurion and they that were with him,” in attendance at the execution, seem to have been Gentiles; and though, doubtless, they had heard that Jesus claimed to be the Messiah of the Jews, they perhaps very imperfectly comprehended the import of the designation; but they were forthwith overwhelmed with the conviction, that He, whose death they had just witnessed, must have given a true account of His mission and His dignity, for ”when they saw the earthquake, and those things that were done, they feared greatly, saying--Truly this was _the Son of G.o.d_” [29:2]
The body of our Lord was committed to the grave on the evening of Friday, and, early on the morning of the following Sunday, He issued from the tomb. An ordinary individual has no control over the duration of his existence, but Jesus demonstrated that He had power to lay down His life, and that He had power to take it again. [29:3] Had He been a deceiver His delusions must have terminated with His death, so that His resurrection must be regarded as His crowning miracle, or rather, as the affixing of the broad seal of heaven to the truth of His mission as the Messiah. It was, besides, the fulfilment of an ancient prophecy; [29:4]
a proof of His fore-knowledge; [29:5] and a pledge of the resurrection of His disciples. [29:6] Hence, in the New Testament, [29:7] it is so often mentioned with marked emphasis.
There is no fact connected with the life of Christ better attested than that of His resurrection. He was put to death by His enemies; and His body was not removed from the cross until they were fully satisfied that the vital spark had fled. [29:8] His tomb was scooped out of a solid rock; [29:9] the stone which blocked up the entrance was sealed with all care; and a military guard kept constant watch to prevent its violation.
[30:1] But in due time an earthquake shook the cemetery--”The angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door and sat upon it ... and for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men.” [30:2] Our Lord meanwhile came forth from the grave, and the sentinels, in consternation, hastened to the chief priests and communicated the astounding intelligence. [30:3] But these infatuated men, instead of yielding to the force of this overwhelming evidence, endeavoured to conceal their infamy by the base arts of bribery and falsehood. ”They gave large money unto the soldiers, saying--Say ye--His disciples came by night and stole him away while we slept...so they took the money, and did as they were taught.” [30:4]
Jesus, as the first-born of Mary, was presented in the temple forty days after His birth; and, as ”the first-begotten of the dead,” [30:5] He presented Himself before His Father, in the temple above, forty days after He had opened the womb of the grave. During the interval he appeared only to His own followers. [30:6] Those who had so long and so wilfully rejected the testimony of His teaching and His miracles, had certainly no reason to expect any additional proofs of His Divine mission. But the Lord manifests Himself to His Church, ”and not unto the world,” [30:7] and to such as fear His name He is continually supplying new and interesting ill.u.s.trations of His presence, His power, His wisdom, and His mercy. Whilst He is a pillar of darkness to His foes, He is a pillar of light to His people. Though Jesus was now invisible to the Scribes and Pharisees, He admitted His disciples to high and holy fellows.h.i.+p. Now their hearts burned within them as He spake to them ”of the things pertaining to the kingdom of G.o.d,” [31:1] and as ”He expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.” [31:2] Now He doubtless pointed out to them how He was symbolised in the types, how He was exhibited in the promises, and how He was described in the prophecies. Now He explained to them more fully the arrangements of His Church, and now He commanded His apostles to go and ”teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” [31:3] Having a.s.sured the twelve of His presence with His true servants even unto the end of the world, and having led them out as far as Bethany, a village a few furlongs from Jerusalem, ”he lifted up his hands and blessed them. And it came to pa.s.s, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven.” [31:4]
Thus closed the earthly career of Him who is both the Son of man and the Son of G.o.d. Though He was sorely tried by the privations of poverty, though He was exposed to the most brutal and degrading insults, and though at last He was forsaken by His friends and consigned to a death of lingering agony, He never performed a single act or uttered a single word unworthy of His exalted and blessed mission. The narratives of the evangelists supply clear internal evidence that, when they described the history of Jesus, they must have copied from a living original; for otherwise, no four individuals, certainly no four Jews, could have each furnished such a portrait of so great and so singular a personage.
Combining the highest respect for the inst.i.tutions of Moses with a spirit eminently catholic, He was at once a devout Israelite and a large-hearted citizen of the world. Rising far superior to the prejudices of His countrymen, He visited Samaria, and conversed freely with its population; and, whilst declaring that He was sent specially to the seed of Abraham, He was ready to extend His sympathy to their bitterest enemies. Though He took upon Him the form of a servant, there was nothing mean or servile in His behaviour; for, when He humbled Himself, there was ever about Him an air of condescending majesty.
Whether He administers comfort to the mourner, or walks upon the waves of the sea, or replies to the cavils of the Pharisees, He is still the same calm, holy, and gracious Saviour. When His pa.s.sion was immediately in view, He was as kind and as considerate as ever, for, on the very night in which He was betrayed, He was employed in the inst.i.tution of an ordinance which was to serve as a sign and a seal of His grace throughout all generations. His character is as sublime as it is original. It has no parallel in the history of the human family. The impostor is cunning, the demagogue is turbulent, and the fanatic is absurd; but the conduct of Jesus Christ is uniformly gentle and serene, candid, courteous, and consistent. Well, indeed, may His name be called Wonderful. ”He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world know him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not.
But an many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of G.o.d, even to them that believe on his name.” [32:1]
SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE TO CHAPTER II.
THE YEAR OF CHRIST'S BIRTH.
The Christian era commences on the 1st of January of the year 754 of the city of Rome. That our Lord was born about the time stated in the text may appear from the following considerations--
_The visit of the wise men to Bethlehem must have taken place a very few days after the birth of Jesus, and before His presentation in the temple._ Bethlehem was not the stated residence of Joseph and Mary, either before or after the birth of the child (Luke i. 26, ii. 4, 39; Matt. ii. 2). They were obliged to repair to the place on account of the taxing, and immediately after the presentation in the temple, they returned to Nazareth and dwelt there (Luke ii. 39). Had the visit of the wise men occurred, as some think, six, or twelve, or eighteen months after the birth, the question of Herod to ”the chief priests and scribes of the people” where ”Christ _should be born_”--would have been quite vain, as the infant might have been removed long before to another part of the country. The wise men manifestly expected to see a _newly born_ infant, and hence they asked--”where is he that _is born_ King of the Jews?” (Matt. ii. 2.) The evangelist also states expressly that they came to Jerusalem ”_when Jesus was born_” (Matt. ii. 1). At a subsequent period they would have found the Holy Child, not at Bethlehem, but at Nazareth.
The only plausible objection to this view of the matter is derived from the statement that Herod ”sent forth and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem and in all the coasts thereof, _from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently enquired of the wise men”_ (Matt. ii. 16). The king had ascertained from these sages ”what time the star appeared” (Matt. ii. 7), and they seem to have informed him that it had been visible a year before. A Jewish child was said to be two years old _when it had entered on its second year_ (see Greswell's ”Dissertations,” vol. ii. 136); and, to make sure of his prey, Herod murdered all the infants in Bethlehem and the neighbourhood under the age of thirteen months. The wise men had not told him that the child was a year old--it was obvious that they thought very differently--but the tyrant butchered all who came, within the range of suspicion. It is highly probable that the star announced the appearance of the Messiah twelve months before he was born. Such an intimation was given of the birth of Isaac, who was a remarkable type of Christ (Gen.
xvii. 21). See also 2 Kings iv. 16, and Dan. iv. 29, 33.
The presentation of the infant in the temple occurred _after the death of Herod_. This follows as a corollary from what has been already advanced, for if the wise men visited Bethlehem immediately after the birth, and if the child was then hurried away to Egypt, the presentation could not have taken place earlier. The ceremony was performed _forty days after the birth_ (Luke ii. 22, and Lev. xii. 2, 3, 4), and as the flight and the return might both have been accomplished in eight or ten days, there was ample time for a sojourn of at least two or three weeks in that part of Egypt which was nearest to Palestine. Herod died during this brief exile, and yet his demise happened so soon before the departure of the holy family on their way home, that the intelligence had not meanwhile reached Joseph by the voice of ordinary fame; and until his arrival in the land of Israel, he did not even know that Archelaus reigned in Judea (Matt. ii. 22). He seems to have inferred from the dream that the dynasty of the Herodian family had been completely subverted, so that when he heard of the succession of Archelaus ”he was afraid” to enter his territory; but, at this juncture, being ”counselled of G.o.d” in another dream, he took courage, proceeded on his journey, and, after the presentation in the temple, ”returned into the parts of Galilee.”
That the presentation in the temple took place after the death of Herod is further manifest from the fact that the babe remained uninjured, though his appearance in the sacred courts awakened uncommon interest, and though Anna ”spake of him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem” (Luke ii. 38). Herod had his spies in all quarters, and had he been yet living, the intelligence of the presentation and of its extraordinary accompaniments, would have soon reached his ears, and he would have made some fresh attempt upon the life of the infant. But when the babe was actually brought to the temple, the tyrant was no more.
Jerusalem was in a state of great political excitement, and Archelaus had, perhaps, already set sail for Rome to secure from the emperor the confirmation of his t.i.tle to the kingdom (see Josephus' Antiq. xvii. c.
9), so that it is not strange if the declarations of Simeon and Anna did not attract any notice on the part of the existing rulers.
a.s.suming, then, that Christ was born a very short time before the death of Herod, we have now to ascertain the date of the demise of that monarch. Josephus states (Antiq. xiv. 14, -- 5) that Herod was made king by the Roman Senate in the 184th Olympiad, when Calvinus and Pollio were consuls, that is, in the year of Rome 714; and that he reigned thirty-seven years (Antiq. xvii. 8, -- 1). We may infer, therefore, that his reign terminated in the year 751 of the city of Rome. He died shortly before the pa.s.sover; his disease seems to have been of a very lingering character; and he appears to have languished under it upwards of a year (Josephus' Antiq. xvii. 6, -- 4, 5, and xvii. 9, -- 2, 3). The pa.s.sover of 751 fell on the 31st of March (see Greswell's ”Dissertations,” vol. i. p. 331), and as our Lord was in all likelihood born early in the month, the Jewish king probably ended his days a week or two afterwards, or about the time of the vernal equinox. According to this computation the _conception_ took place exactly at the feast of Pentecost, which fell, in 750, on the 31st of May.
This view is corroborated by Luke iii. 1, where it is said that the word of G.o.d came to John the Baptist ”in the _fifteenth year_ of the reign of Tiberius Caesar.” John's ministry had continued only a short time when he was imprisoned, and then Jesus ”began to be _about thirty_ years of age” (Luke iii. 23). Augustus died in August 767, and this year 767, according to a mode of reckoning then in use (see Hales' ”Chronology,”
i. 49, 171, and Luke xxiv. 21), was the _first year_ of his successor Tiberius. The _fifteenth year_ of Tiberius, according to the same mode of calculation, commenced on the 1st of January 781 of the city of Rome, and terminated on the 1st of January 782. If then our Lord was born about the 1st of March 751 of Rome, and if the Baptist was imprisoned early in 781, it could be said with perfect propriety that Jesus then ”began to be about thirty years of age.” This view is further confirmed by the fact that Quirinius, or Cyrenius, mentioned Luke ii. 2, was _first_ governor of Syria from the _close_ of the year 750 of Rome to 753. (See Merivale, iv. p. 457, note.) Our Lord was born under his administration, and according to the date we have a.s.signed to the nativity, the ”taxing” at Bethlehem must have taken place a few months after Cyrenius entered into office.
This view of the date of the birth of Christ, which differs somewhat from that of any writer with whom I am acquainted, appears to meet all the difficulties connected with this much-disputed question. It is based partly upon the principle, so ingeniously advocated by Whiston in his ”Chronology,” that the flight into Egypt took place before the presentation in the temple. I have never yet met with any antagonist of that hypothesis who was able to give a satisfactory explanation of the text on which it rests. Some other dates a.s.signed for the birth of Christ are quite inadmissible. In Judea shepherds could not have been found ”abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night”
(Luke ii. 8) in November, December, January, or, perhaps, February; but in March, and especially in a mild season, such a thing appears to have been quite common. (See Greswell's ”Dissertations,” vol. i. p. 391, and Robinson's ”Biblical Researches,” vol ii. p. 97, 98.) Hippolytus, one of the earliest Christian writers who touches on the subject, indicates that our Lord was born about the time of the pa.s.sover. (See Greswell, i.
461, 462.)
CHAPTER III.
THE TWELVE AND THE SEVENTY.