'Behold, the veil of the Temple was rent in twain from
the top to the bottom.'--MATT. xxvii. 51.
As I suppose we are all aware, the Jewish Temple was divided into
three parts: the Outer Court, open to all; the Holy Place, to which
the ministering priests had daily access to burn incense and trim
the lamps; and the Holy of Holies, where only the High Priest was
permitted to go, and that but once a year, on the great Day of
Atonement. For the other three hundred and sixty-four days the
shrine lay silent, untrodden, dark. Between it and the less sacred
Holy Place hung the veil, whose heavy folds only one man was
permitted to lift or to pass. To all others it was death to peer
into the mysteries, and even to him, had he gone at another time,
and without the blood of the sacrifice, death would have ensued.
If we remember all this and try to cast ourselves back in
imagination to the mental attitude of the ordinary Jew, the incident
of my text receives its true interpretation. At the moment when the
loud cry of the dying Christ rung over the heads of the awestruck
multitude, that veil was, as it were, laid hold of by a pair of
giant hands and torn asunder, as the Evangelist says, 'from the top
to the bottom.' The incident was a symbol. In one aspect it
proclaimed the end of the long years of Israel's prerogative. In
another it ushered in an epoch of new relations between man and God.
If Jesus Christ was what He said He was, if His death was what He
declared it to be, it was fitting that it should be attended by a
train of subordinate and interpreting wonders. These were, besides
that of my text, the darkened sun, the trembling earth, the shivered
rocks, the open graves, the rising saints--all of them, in their
several ways, illuminating the significance of that death on
Calvary.
Not less significant is this symbol of my text, and I desire now to
draw your attention to its meanings.