The World's Great Sermons, Volume 09: Cuyler to Van Dyke
Religion
The World's Great Sermons, Volume 09: Cuyler to Van Dyke
Sermons
and he knows that his record is true."
And once again, in the haste of the resurrection morning, what was
the moment and what was the scene which turned his despair into
belief? It was the moment at which he stooped down and saw within
the empty tomb the folded napkin and the linen clothes. What did he
notice? Why, that the napkin that had been round the Master's head
was not lying with the linen clothes, but was rolled up in a place
by itself. A tiny, tiny thing! Yet somehow it was that which he saw
and never forgot. It was that which he could never omit from his
story of the resurrection--the rolled-up napkin lying apart from the
linen clothes. Was it the sudden sense that struck him of order and
seemliness as of a thing premeditated, intended? Was it the reaction
of detecting the quiet tokens of deliberate purpose there, where
all had seemed to him a very chaos of confusion? Who can say? Only
just then a key was somewhat turned and a bolt shot back somewhere
within his breast, and a secret flashed in upon him, and a thrill of
insight rushed over him, and his blindness fell off as it had been
scales, and a quiver of hope shot up like a flame, and a new light
broke over him, and he passed at one bound out of death into life.
"Then entered in, therefore, that other disciple which came first to
the tomb, and he saw and believed."
My brethren, where do you stand? How far have you come in this
pathway of faith? Are you yet at the beginning, looking wistfully,
with hungry eyes, after a hundred gallant human heroes who point you
this way and that? Are you musing in your heart which of them may
be your guide and master, which is the Christ? Good, and fair, and
high they may be; but they must all confess it, they can not deny
it--they are not the Christ. And all of them who are honest will
earnestly assure you, "It is not I, but another." Oh, and that other
even now standeth among you, tho you know Him not yet; and there is
a voice gone out upon Him which has gone out upon none other ever
born of woman, with this witness, "Behold the Lamb of God, which
taketh away the sin of the world!"
Consider it. What an assurance! Who is there that has ever been
brave enough to accept such a salutation without a whisper of
protest, without a shadow of a scruple? Who is this that dares to
stand up before the entire mass of His fellows and say, "Come, all
who are weary and heavy-laden--come, all who are burdened sorely
with sin--come all to me--I will give you rest?" Who is He? Look
at Him. He is passing even now before you. Follow Him. He is very
quiet, and still, and silent; but follow Him. He will turn at last
and speak, and invite you--invite you a little further. "Master,
where dwellest thou?" "Come and see."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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