Mark 16:1-8 And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices… No other spot on the surface of this earth can equally rouse Christian interest. Rome and Athens have glories all their own: they say much to the historical imagination; but they say little by comparison to all that is deepest in our nature — little to the conscience, little to the heart. Sinai and Horeb, Lebanon and Hermon, Hebron and Bethel, Shechem and the Valley of the Jordan and the Valley of the Kishon, have high claims on Jews and Christians from their place in the history and books of the chosen people; but dearer still to us Christians are Bethlehem and Nazareth, and Jericho and Bethany, and Tabor and the Hill of the Beatitudes, and Bethsaida and Capernaum, and Gethsemane and Calvary; and yet the interest even of these must pale before that which attracts us to the Tomb of Jesus. When in the Middle Ages the flower of European chivalry, and amongst them our own King Richard, set forth on that succession of enterprises which we know as the Crusades, the special object which roused Europe to this great and prolonged effort was the deliverance not so much of the Holy Land, but the Holy Sepulchre from the rule of the infidel; and when a Christian in our day finds himself in the Holy City, what is it to which his eager steps first and naturally turn? There is much, indeed, on every side to detain him; but one spot there is which gives to the rest the importance which in his eyes they possess, and one spot compared with which the site of the Temple itself is insignificant; he must take the advice of the Angel of the Sepulchre (Matthew 28:6), — he must "come and see the place where the Lord lay." (Canon Liddon.) Parallel Verses KJV: And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him. |
    |