Читать книгу Choice Specimens of American Literature, and Literary Reader - Benj. N. Martin - Страница 68

Here we remark, in general, that his resurrection was the great sign and crowning miracle to which our Lord, all the way of his ministry, to the day of his crucifixion, referred both friends and opposers, for the final confirmation of all his claims and doctrines. He staked all on the promise that he would rise from death. The Jews asked of him a sign, that they might believe. He answered, "There shall no sign be given, but the sign of the prophet Jonas. For as Jonas was three days and nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." Thus on that single; event, the resurrection of Christ, the whole of Christianity, as it all centres in, and depends on him, was made to hinge. Redemption waited the evidence of resurrection. Nothing was to be accounted as sealed and finally certified, till Jesus should deliver himself from the power of death. All of the gospel, all the hopes it brings to us, all the promises with which it comforts us, were taken for their final verdict, as true or false, sufficient or worthless, to the door of that jealously-guarded and stone-sealed sepulchre, waiting the settlement of the question, will he rise?

But an event so momentous was not left to but one class of evidences. There was a way by which thousands at once were made to receive as powerful assurance that Christ was risen, as if they had seen him in his risen body. Jesus, before his death, had made a great promise to his disciples, to be fulfilled by him only after his death and resurrection; a promise impossible to be fulfilled if his resurrection failed; because then, not only would he be under the power of death, but all his claim to divine power would be brought to nought. It was the promise of the Holy Ghost. "When the Comforter is come whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of Truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me, he shall glorify me."

It was after he had "shown himself alive after his passion, by many infallible proofs, being seen of his disciples forty days, and speaking to them of the things pertaining to the Kingdom of God," that the day for the accomplishment of that promise came. The day was that which commemorated the giving of the law on Mount Sinai. It was now to witness the going forth of the gospel from Jerusalem. I need not relate to you the wonderful events of that day of Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Ghost with the "sound as of a rushing mighty wind" that "filled all the house;" the cloven tongues "like as of fire," which sat on each of the disciples; the evidence that it was the Spirit of God which had then come, given in the sudden and astonishing change which immediately came over the apostles, transforming them from weak and timid men to the boldest and strongest; in the change which suddenly came upon the power of their ministry, converting it from the weak agent it had previously been in contact with all the unbelief and wickedness of men into an instrument so mighty that out of a congregation of Jews of all nations, many of whom had probably partaken in the crucifixion of Christ, three thousand that day were bowed down to repentance and subdued to his obedience.

Thus was the day of Pentecost, a great day of testimony to the life and divine power, and consequently the resurrection of Christ. Each of those who heard the divers tongues of the ministry of that day, each of the three thousand, was a witness of the same.

[Footnote 14: A native of New Jersey; in early life Chaplain and Professor of Moral Philosophy in the Military Academy at West Point and long time Bishop of Ohio in the Protestant Episcopal Church. His Treatise on the Evidences of Christianity has great merit, and his theological and controversial writings are in high esteem: greatly venerated for his truly evangelical character.]

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=George W. Bethune, 1805–1862.= (Manual, p. 487.)

From the "Expository Lectures on the Heidelberg Catechism."