New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1877-03-31

the earth was shaken when He died that ,,.
sun vailed its face: but He Gid die. Notbins
remained but to lap the body in few noo,
spices, to weep over it, and there was the end
| We can see how, on this stunned, breatbles.
day, even His enemies missed in the crowded
| streets the tall figure in its seamless robe tba
visage more marred than any mans, in which
even their dull sense had told them a God
went by. There was His mother, too; John.
whom He had loved; the blind and deaf whom
He had cured Lazarus, himself brought back
from DEATH wandering through the rocky hills
and their dreary gray olive groves, or in the
narrow streets of the great Oriental CITY.
finding them all vacant. There is no evidence
that any of them believed that He would rise
again. Joseph, a rich, well-meaning friend Of
Jesus, begged His body, paid it all honor, but
rolled heavy stone to the door of the
sepulcher.
Now nobody can read this story without
perceiving how closely alike the condition Of
the world is just now to this intermediate day.
Very few of us doubt that Christ was here
alive: very many of us doubt that He is
here alive now. Thinking men tell you that
if the truth, the stern integrity, the broad
areth preached, could work like leaven in this
world of to-day, it would purify and elevate.
But they do not find the Great Teacher. He
is not i'm the streets among the dangerous
"classes;" He is not in the prisons, nor in
Wall-st. You do not find Him at massacres in
Servia, in Indian wars, in political jobbery or
government corruption. The poor man
looks into the costly fashionable church
where he must pay his years income to
buy leave to hear of Him, and he is certain
that the lOwly Savior is not there. Is He dead,
thenf Many think so and others think that
the day for His teaching is over, and they put
Kant or Emerson or Darwin in His place as
the worlds helpers. But the great mass Of
honest believers and of all clear minded think
ers know that He is alive, that the only adj
vances made by the world in civilization have
been made by adherence to His teaching, and
the only retrOcessiOns have been from denial
or corruption of Christianity. Even in heather
countries we find how their progress toward
civilization has been caused by those religious
doctrines which they held synonymous with
Christianity-as in many in the creeds OF
COnfucius and Buddha. In our own political
history even the skeptic must acknowledge
how quickly prosperity has followed every
right word and right action-as, for instance,
within few weeks after years of wholesale
corruption the heart Of the people responded
instantly to the first movement toward plain
integrity of action on the part of an honest
man, and declared 1t to be the highest states
manship.
1t is the cheer and strength OF the world
that Christ is alive. 1t is its shame that His
friends, well-meaning and often rich az Joseph,
roll heavy stones to the door of His sepulcher
and keep Him out of sight Money spent to
crafty their aesthetic tastes on carved stones
and stained glass, while thousands of His poor
are starving in back alleys in soul and body,
is stone. Blind bigOtry, the bitterness OF
sectarianism, the Pharisaic pride which bars
its ten-fOOt fold on the lean sheep within and
sends the myriads without straight to hell
are they not all stOnes7 SO dead the Christ
lies within that there is but feeble hope that
He will rise again. There are none of us, in
short, who, in His name, speak false word
or live sham life who do not help to bar
His sepulcher. He will rise as surely as to-
morrows sun. But it will not be we who shall
have rolled away the stone.