e hour of Christ's death doomed to vacuity and destruction.

But in three days a new and better Temple was raised in Christ's body,
glorified by the presence of the indwelling God. Forty and six years had
the Jews spent in rearing the magnificent pile that astonished and awed
their conquerors. They had thus themselves rebuilt more splendidly the
Temple of Solomon. But to rebuild the Temple they destroyed in
crucifying the Lord was beyond them. The sign of rebuilding their Temple
of marble, which they scouted as a ridiculous extravagance, was really a
far less stupendous and infinitely less significant sign than that which
He actually gave them in rising from the dead. If it was impossible to
rear that magnificent fabric in three days, yet something might be done
towards it: but towards the raising of the dead body of Christ nothing
could be done by human skill, diligence, or power.

But it is not the stupendous difficulty of this sign which should
chiefly engage our attention. It is rather its significance. Christ rose
from the dead, not to startle godless and truth-hating men into faith,
but to furnish all mankind with a new and better Temple, with the means
of spiritual worship and constant fellowship with God. There was a
necessity for the resurrection. Those who became intimately acquainted
with Christ slowly but surely became aware that they found more of God
in Him than ever they had found in the Temple. Gradually they acquired
new thoughts about God; and instead of thinking of Him as a Sovereign
veiled from the popular gaze in the hidden Holy of holies, and receiving
through consecrated hands the gifts and offering of the people, they
learned to think of Him as a Father, to whom no condescension was too
deep, no familiarity with men too close. Unconsciously to themselves,
apparently, they began to think of Christ as the true Revealer of God,
as the living Temple who at all hours gave them access to the living
God. But not till the Resurrection was this transference complete--nay,
so fixed had their hearts been, in common with all Jewish hearts, upon
the Temple, that not until the Temple was destroyed did they wholly
grasp what was given them in the Resurrection of Jesus. It was the
Resurrection which confirmed their wavering belief in Him as the Son of
God. As Paul says, it was the resurrection which "declared Him to be the
Son of God with power." Being the Son of God, it was impossible He
should be held by death