SERMON XXI. EASTER SUNDAY. On the Resurrection of our adored Redeemer. He is risen; he is not here: behold the place where they laid him. Mark xvi. 6. OUR meditations, for this week past, have been employed on the sorrows and sufferings of the Son of God, for the sins of the world. We have viewed him sold, betrayed, denied, mocked, scourged, reviled, crowned with thorns, and nailed to the cross; from thence taken down and laid in the grave, a large stone placed at the mouth of the sepulchre, properly sealed, and the watch carefully set. During the solemn commemoration of those days in which the Bridegroom was thus taken away, the mirth of tabrets has ceased, and the noise of them that rejoice has given way to the penitential accents of grief and lamentation. For a little season, even the sacred music of the church has not been heard; and her harp, like that of holy Job, "has been urned into mourning, and her organ into the voice of those that weep," while either with one of the Maries she has stood under the cross, or watched with the other at the grave of her Lord. But as a woman who in her travail has sorrow, because her hour is come, yet afterwards remembers no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world; with such unfeigned exultation do we on this day celebrate the second birth of the holy Jesus from the tomb, by which he realized to his desponding disciples, in a peculiar manner, one of his own beatitudes, "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted."+ Blessed are they who have mourned for the death of Christ, and the sins which occasioned it, for they are the persons who will be comforted by the tidings of his resurrection; their sorrow will indeed be turned into joy, when they hear that their iniquity is pardoned, since he who died for their sins is risen again for their justification. Deservedly, therefore, has this ever been esteemed the queen of festivals, worthy to give laws to the rest, to appear at the head of the holy band, crowned with everlasting joy, and hailed by incessant Allelujahs; for now it well becomes us to obey that injunction, issued of old from the Lord by his prophet Isaias : "Give praise, O ye heavens, for the Lord hath shewn mercy shout with joy ye ends of the earth, ye mountains resound with praise: thou, O forest, and every tree therein, for the Lord hath redeemed Jacob, and Israel shall be glori fied."+ Let songs of praise, therefore, fill the heavens, from the comforted spirits of just men made perfect, of patriarchs, and prophets, and saints, upon Isaias xliv, 23. Job xxx. 31. + Matt. v. 5. this triumph of their God. Let the inhabitants of the earth diffuse in loud acclamations the glorious name of the mighty conqueror, who by his resurrection has procured and given an earnest of their own. Let them break forth into singing, and utter the praises of him who had delivered them from the curse of the law, and from the guilt of sin, and from the power of the second death, as well as from the dominion of the first. Let such be the joy produced in heaven and on earth, among angels and men, by the glorious tidings of this day's gospel, "The Lord is risen."* The province allotted to me at present is, to display the grounds and reasons of this joy, or to state the evidence for the fact which gives occasion to it, namely, the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead; which, being the key-stone of the Christian fabric, and the foundation of all our hopes, it must always be a task no less profitable than delightful, to establish so important a doctrine upon its proper basis-and from it I shall shew the consequent certainty of our own resurrection. Oh day which the Lord hath made, let us for ever rejoice in thy light! Oh day of heavenly designs and promises, may we never forget thee! Oh day of consolation and grace, may a rich effusion of the peace of God on this auditory preserve thy memorial through a thousand generations! The evidence for the resurrection of Christ is to be taken from the Old Testament, from which it appears, that the Messiah was to rise from the dead; and from the New, from which it appears that Jesus of Nazareth did rise from the dead, and therefore is the Messiah. In the first place *Mark xvi. 6. then, the prophets in the old law give their evidence of the resurrection of the Messiah! some in the ancient way of figure and emblem ; others with less reserve, in express literal declaration. Of the former kind is that of Jonas, devoted for the safety of the vessel in which he sailed, detained three days in what he styles, "the belly of hell,"* and then restored to the the world again, to preach penance to Ninive; a circumstance too plain and striking to need any comment, after that given by our Lord himself. "As Jonas was in the whale's belly three days and three nights, so shall the Son of man be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights."+ Of a like nature is that vision of Zacharias, in which he saw Jesus the high priest clothed with filthy garments, which are taken from him, and he is clothed with change of raiments and sacerdotal ornaments, denoting the glory and purity of Christ, when our iniquity passed from him, and he arose without sin unto salvation. And thus again the prophecy of Aggeus, "that the glory of the last house shall be great, and more than that of the first," is as true of the temple of our Lord's body after his resurrection, compared with that before his death, as it is of the second material temple compared with the first, on account of the presence of God incarnate in the one, which was not in the other. But Isaias is very explicit, and says, in the person of Christ, addressing himself to the Church: "Thy dead men shall live, my slain shall rise again: awake and give praise, ye that dwell in the dust, for thy dew is the dew of the * Jonas ii. 3. + Matt. xii. 40. light, and the land of the giants thou shalt pull down into ruin."* And elsewhere, discoursing of the Messiah, he foretels expressly, "that after the Lord was pleased to bruise him in infirmity, and after laying down his life for sin, he shall see a long-lived seed, and the will of the Lord shall be prosperous in his hand."+ I shall close the predictive evidence with the famous passage from the fifteenth Psalm: "Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, nor wilt thou give thy holy One to see corruption: thou hast made known to me the ways of life, thou shalt fill me with joy with thy countenance: at thy right hand are delights even to the end." Where, as St. Peter assures us in his sermon, "David spoke not in his own person, but being a prophet, and knew that God hath sworn to him with an oath, that of the fruit of his loins one should sit upon his throne; foreseeing he spoke of the resurrection of Christ; for neither was he left in hell, neither did his flesh see corruption: this Jesus hath God raised up again, whereof we are all witnesses." A fact of so extraordinary a nature as the resurrection of a body from the dead, predicted as we have seen, at sundry times, and in divers manners, by the prophets, cannot be supposed to have happened, without sufficient witnesses of its accomplishment. These are now to be collected, and made to pass in due order before us, in such a view as the usual time allotted to discourses of this kind will allow me to take. First, I shall consider the number of these witnesses; St. Paul enumerates them, and tells us that Jesus Christ "was seen by Cephas, and * Isaias xxvi. 19. + Isaias liii. 10. Acts ii. 30, 31, 32, |