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301 kindly meant: no other construction could possibly be put upon Joseph’s act in that matter. It was sealed, it was watched, it was guarded—and yet it was rolled away. God sends a great wind upon the earth and throws down your towers and temples and towns and for tresses—ran invisible wind—you cannot tell whence it comes or whither it goes, but it comes in great shocks and tries the foundations of your structures, breaks the ships to Tarshish, and troubles the sea as with great agony, and yet it is only a wind, without shape, without colour, without measure, almost without name, invisible—but when you see the ships hurried before it, and all i their proud mast-work torn to rags and thrown into the foaming deep, and see great structures bulge out and fall flat down on the astonished earth, we feel how, in some aspects, we are truly little and weak. Now the angel speaks, and I would hear every word he says. “Fear not ye, for I know that ye seek Jesus which was crucified. He is not here, for He is risen as He said: come, see the place where the Lord lay, and go quickly and tell His disciples that He is risen from the dead, and behold He goeth before you into Galilee, there shall ye see Him: lo, I have told you.” You could not have put more matter into so short a compass. The angels speak concisely, they have specific messages to deliver, and with miserliness of language they crush into every syllable all the mean ing which it will hold. The speech was sympathetic—“Fear not ye.” The speech was heart-reading—“For I know that ye seek Jesus.” The speech was explanatory—“He is not here, He is risen, as He said.” The speech was comforting—“Come, see the place where the Lord lay.” The speech was inspir ing—“Go ye.” The angel was the first to preach Jesus and the Resurrection; all other preachers follow the “young man” who announced the Resurrection and sent the women to proclaim it.
THE K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S evangelists; for the detail of the pic ture, always consult the evangelist Mark. According to Mark the angel was a young man. Are there any old men in heaven? None. There are really no old men on earth, if we take the ‘*4ght view of the case. How old are y%u, trembling pilgrim? Do you say eighty? I can show you a tree three hundred years old. Do you say you have passed the four-score years, and now there remains but a little more light, and you will soon be gone? You are an old man, but you are a young being: the age is an accident, the exist ence is a fact. Do not give way to old age, it is only a mockery, it is not really old age: you are, if in Christ, always young. How else could the nar rative read than that a young man came, and did this? For God could have sent no old man, having none in his great household. “Who are these, arrayed in white robes? and knowest thou whence they came?'’ “These are they who have washed then/ robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before the throne night and day, and serve God in His temple. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, neither shall the sun light on them nor any heat.” A youth that has no necessities, a youth on which time can write no wrinkle. We shall all be young some day, when we are clothed upon, with our house from heaven! God is always sending young men down into the world to roll its stones away, to break up its rocks, to liberate its captives, and to give new dawning. Encourage the youngi be large-minded and pitiful toward their mistakes, and see in the outputting of their energy the possibil ity of a noble and beneficent manhood. He rolled away the stone. The stone was turned to new uses, for the angel “sat upon it.” What thought the stone had occasioned by Joseph’s rolling it to the door of the sepulchre! It was
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