But when the hour has come which the Father has kept in His own power,
then in one form or another His life-bringing angel appears to such a
soul. Yet how little do we know about what part the angel had in the
Savior's resurrection! We do not know if the Savior saw him or not; we
can not determine the moment at which he rolled away the stone from
the tomb and the reanimated Savior came forth; no one witnessed it,
and the only persons of whom we are told that they might have been
able to see it with their bodily eyes were smitten with blindness. And
in like manner, neither do we know how the soul, lying, so to speak,
in the tomb of self-destruction, is wrought upon by the angel of the
Lord in order to call forth the life of God in it. It arises unseen in
that grave-like silence, and can not be perceived until it is actually
present; what is properly the beginning of it is hidden, as every
beginning usually is, even from him to whom the life is imparted. But
this is certain, as the apostle says, that the Lord was raised from
the dead by the glory of the Father, and thus also, according to the
words of the Savior, no man comes to the Son except the Father draw
him; that same glory of the Father, which then called forth the Savior
from the tomb, still awakens in the soul that has died to sin the new
life, like the resurrection life of the Lord.
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