We can never understand the utter desolation of
Christ’s disciples during the days that lay betwixt Christ’s death and His
resurrection. Our faith rests on centuries. We know that that grave was not
even an interruption to the progress of His work, but was the straight road to
His triumph and His glory. We know that it was the completion of the work of
which the raising of the widow’s son and of Lazarus were but the beginnings.
But these disciples did not know that. To them the inferior miracles by which
He had redeemed others from the power of the grave, must have made His own
captivity to it all the more stunning; and the thought which such miracles
ending so must have left upon them,
must have been something like this: “He saved others; Himself He cannot save.”
And therefore we can never think ourselves fully back to that burst of strange,
sudden thankfulness with which these weeping Marys found those two calm angels
sitting like the cherubim over the mercy-seat, but overshadowing a better
propitiation, and heard the words of my text: “Why seek ye the living among the
dead? He is not here, but is risen.”