Conflict Ended
133
bearing the marks of the cruel nails. Those lips, that had answered his
petition of relief with the comforting words: “I will; be thou clean,”
were silent now in death. Men never knew how much Christ was to the
world, till his light was quenched in the darkness of the tomb. They
heard the sufferers helplessly calling for Jesus until their voices were
lost in death.
The revenge which the priests thought would be so sweet had
already become bitterness to them. They knew that they were meeting
the severe censure of the people; they knew that the very persons
whom they had influenced against Jesus were now horrified by their
own shameful work. As they witnessed all these proofs of the divine
influence of Jesus, they were more afraid of his dead body in the tomb
[191]
than they had been of him when he was living and among them. The
possibility of his coming forth from the sepulcher filled their guilty
souls with indescribable terror. They felt that Jesus might at any time
stand before them, the accused to become the accuser, the condemned
to in turn condemn, the slain to demand justice in the death of his
murderers.
* * * * *