The Dawson news. (Dawson, Ga.) 1889-current, 1920-03-30
"HE IS RISEN"

In the grazing dawn of an oriental morn
ing a group of women, two of them bearing
the perfumed spices they had prepared for
the amounting of the dead, passed out from
the yelled city of Jerusalem and wended
their way down the dry ravine to the tomb
cut in the rock ledge in the hill where
Joseph of Arimathea had laid the body OF
Christ on the evening of his cruciiXlon
three days before. Two of these women,
they who bore the perfumes, Mary Magda-
lene and Mary, the mother of James and
Salome. had witnessed the awful spectacle
of that crucifxion, and had followed Joseph
as he bore the body from Calvary to his
own new hewn tomb and had sat over
against the sepulchre while the earthly
form of their Master was wrapped in grave
clothes and laid before the stone shelf with
in the tomb They had seen the stone
rolled across the opening and the resting
place of the dead closed, as was the custom
of the times.
As they passed along the dusty path that
led to the burial place OF the crucified Naz-
arene they talked among themselves as to
how they would roll away the stone from
the door of the tomb so that they might
enter and sprinkle the body with the per-
fumes they brought They expected to find
the body as it had been placed, though Jesus
had repeatedly told them and the other
disciples that he would rise from the dead.
They may not have grasped the significance
Of his words, they may not have believed
the miracle possible. At any rate, they
did not expect that which they were to be-
hold.
When they arrived at the grave the stone
was rolled away, the door was open and
the grave clothes, the fine linen in which
the body had been wrapped, were on the
shelf, the napkin which had bound the head
folded and laid at one side, but the body
was gone. The reality of the resurrection
did not even then dawn upon them. But
in the tomb they saw two men clad in shin
ing. garments, and as if to quell the fear
their presence had created one of them
spoke in tones of assurance and in simple
words proclaimed the reality of the resur-
rection, saying, "He is not here; he is risen.
Come, see the place where the Lord lay"
The morning scene at the tomb, spread
of the news and the appearance of Christ to
His disciples gave mankind its assur-
ance of eternal life, of the Immortality of
the soul and the existence hereafter. What
tremendous, what a supreme truth was
couched in the events of that first Easter
mornngi
Next Sabbath throughout christendom
all faiths, all sects and all denominations
will again celebrate the coming of the new
life. In Easter carol and resurrection SER
mon; in Easter mass and anthem; from
pulpits throughout the world with humble
eloquence the story 1000 years old will be
brought home to the hearts of the adher-
ents of the faith of Him who was crucified
and who rose from the dead. Symbol and
emblem of new life; natures resurrection
from the death of winter; the egg, symbol
zeal of the life unseen but existent; the lily,
with its purity and beauty, all will blend
into one sacred and joyous re-declaration of
the simple words of the angel who sat with
in the tomb and proclaimed to the women
the resurrection of the Son of God who as
sumed the form of man that this one truth,
this one hope and this one destiny of man
might be proven for all time and beyond all
equivocation.
Other great moral teachers had preceded
Jesus. But none of them had taught, much
less proved, that there is life after death;
that while the body may molder back to
the earth from whence it came the soul,
the spirit, the divine part of man. lives on
and on through the aeons of endless time,
deathless as eternity. That was the truth
established for all the world in the scene
at the quarried tomb in the hillside cliff
outside Jerusalem while the dawning day
of the new Sabbath broke over the hill
tops and made visible the messengers of
heaven sent to proclaim the proof of i'm
mortality of man.