“And the graves were opened,” says St. Matthew; “and many bodies of the saints that had slept arose, and coming out of the tombs after His resurrection,, came into the holy city and appeared to many.”[1] If the Son of God was then able to do so much by merely speaking a few words; if the servants of God afterwards had the power of raising the dead by the bare mention of the name of Jesus Christ, must the same Son of God have less might and power over the dead when He will cite them before His judgment-seat, although we cannot understand how He will do that? Again; consider the stars in the firmament, the birds in the air, the fishes in the sea, the animals and men on earth, and yourself amongst them; where do they come from? A few thousand years ago they were not. Ask them who is the Master of all those creatures, and they will all answer you: “Know ye that the Lord He is God: He made us, and not we ourselves.”[2] But who can understand that? “He spoke and they were made: He commanded and they were created;” it was all He required to do.[3] And is it not the same Architect who has fashioned the wonderful edifice of the human body, and who can rebuild it after it has been destroyed? If He has done the one without asking your advice, and without your intellect being in the least able to understand how He did it, can He not do the other also without you and your intellect? If the Almighty God could give being to man when the latter was a mere nothing; why should He not be able to give life again to his body after it has crumbled away into dust?
And we must believe it firmly, simply because God has revealed it, after the example of Job. Oh, the Prophet Job did not require all those proofs! Hear this wonderful man preaching from his dung-hill as from a pulpit: “Who will grant me that my words may be written?” so that all may be able to read them. “Who will grant me that they may be marked down in a book with an iron pen, and in a plate of lead, or else be graven with an instrument in flint-stone?” that they may never be obliterated or forgotten. Mark, my dear brethren, with what dignity this holy man commences his discourse. Certainly the doctrine he is about to deliver must be most weighty and worthy to be deeply impressed on the minds of men. And what is it? “For I know that my Redeemer
- ↑ Et monumenta aperta sunt, et multa corpora sanctorum qui dormierant surrexerunt. Et exeuntes de monumentis post resurrectionem ejus, venerunt in sanctam civitatem, et apparuerunt multis.—Matt. xxvii. 52, 53.
- ↑ Scitote quoniam Dominus ipse est Deus; ipse fecit nos, et non ipsi nos.—Ps. xcix. 3.
- ↑ Ipse dixit, et facta sunt; ipse mandavit, et creata sunt.—Ibid. xxxii. 9.
