網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版

PREACHED THROUGHOUT THE WHOLE WORLD,

THIS ALSO THAT SHE HATH DONE SHALL BE SPOKEN OF FOR A MEMORIAL OF HER."-Mark xiv. 9.

THE WEEPER-HER SORROW

66

TURNED INTO JOY.

'Woman, why weepest thou ?"-JOHN xx. 11-17.

THE indefatigable Missionary* of Raratonga informs us how the women there were not allowed to dwell under the same roof with their tyrannical masters, and how they were compelled to take their scanty meal of inferior provisions at a distance, while the lords of creation feasted upon the "fat of the land" and the "abundance of the sea." "Yet," he adds, "during the sickness which prevailed shortly after our arrival, we were delighted at beholding the tender sympathy and unremitting attention which the females showed to their sick husbands. Enter their habitation when we would, by night or by day, the head of the afflicted husband was in the lap of the affectionate wife." Even paganism, with all its demoralising and depress

* Williams.

ing influences, is unable to tear from the female breast the condolence which but nature had implanted there. But Christianity has improved and expanded all that inherently belongs and relatively adheres to the human species. For this blessed boon, woman, civilised and Christianised, has not been ungrateful. When placed in the most trying circumstances, her affection for her Lord and Master has been most illustriously displayed, and her steadfastness to His cause, when it appeared lost, its Founder dead, and His followers fled, was beyond all praise.

"She ne'er with treacherous kiss her Saviour stung,
Nor e'er beguiled Him with unholy tongue;
She, when apostles shrank, could danger brave,
Last at the cross, and earliest at the grave."

At the grave, where rested the incorruptible body of Jesus, the penitent Mary Magdalene now stood weeping-shedding tears of godly sorrow, such as penitents alone can shed-her heart also bleeding, because that the sepulchre had been bereft of the sacred corpse. The tomb of the Son of God had indeed been made

a strong prison. A large block of stone had been placed against its entrance, before which stood the armed soldiers of the empire. With such securities we may fancy how the guilty officials of the Sanhedrim, and others who joined in the condemnation of the "Innocent Blood," would revel in the belief of the speedy disproval of the predictions of the "Faithful and True Witness." But the councils of God stand above the conclaves of men. In an hour when they knew not, at the very moment on which His own heart and eye had been set before man or angel was created, the crucified Jesus passed the thunder-stricken sentinels, and held communion with the attending angels of heaven.

Before break of day, the courageous Mary— "for love is strong as death"-wended her hurried footsteps towards the sepulchre. It was the respondency of love in her heart to that which burnt so unquenchably in Christ's, and bore Him up "under the iniquities of us all," that conducted her fearless to the very

mouth of the tomb. "Thy sins are forgiven thee," was a Divine word in her past history that invested her present position with the "perfect love which casteth out fear." A recipient of the blessings, as well as a spectator of the suffering of the cross, she goes to the grave, thus endeared to her, to weep there. "Woman, why weepest thou?" ask the angels. "She saith unto them, Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid Him."

The great and merciful Being who had already addressed her, saying, "Thy faith hath saved thee, go in peace," had been somehow removed from the place where she confidently expected to find Him.

His body had been

place of interment.

"taken away" from its Heart-rending enough is it to bend over the grave in which have just been laid the remains of those whom we loved in life, and followed in tears to their silent home. But dreadful beyond all conception must it be to the living friends of the pillaged dead to find the newly

« 上一頁繼續 »