I. We can hardly conceive that, had the Cross and the sepulchre been the end of the course of Jesus, His followers would have held together many months. That such men should knit up again their ravelled and scattered expectations; that these disciples, being what we know them to have been, should have recovered heart, as the narrative tells us, and as the world's history shows us they did; is simply inconceivable, supposing that nothing more happened after the deposition in the tomb. We cannot imagine them, crushed, disappointed, deceived men, standing up before the victorious enemies of their disgraced Master, and proclaiming Him a Prince and a Saviour. There is but one way of accounting for this change; and that way is, that the Resurrection really took place, as we are told it did.
II. There have been many strange days in this world's history, but there was never a day so strange as this one of the Resurrection, because never one that resembled it in that which had happened. (1) As the loss had been, so was the gain; as the sorrow, so the joy. A new order of things was begun; a new life was sprung up. The harvest which seemed to have been but an heap in the day of desperate sorrow, is become precious seed, for another and an endless sowing. (2) And with joy comes responsibility: "They could not but speak of those things which they had seen and heard." This testimony of witnessed fact became a necessity of their lives, they went about invested with its responsibility. (3) And with joy and responsibility came also strength. In proportion to the greatness of the event, in proportion to the vastness of the change, in proportion to the working of the spirit, was their testimony given with power so that it bore down all opposition. Between Peter disclaiming Jesus, Peter weeping bitterly for his faithlessness, Peter returning from the sepulchre wondering in himself, and Peter standing before the council and proclaiming that there is none other name given under heaven among men whereby we must be saved there needs no link supplied, if this joy gave responsibility, and strength followed; but otherwise I see not how the weakness and the power are to belong to the same; how the same man is to utter in a few short days some of the weakest and basest, and also some of the boldest and grandest, words in this world's history.
H. Alford, Eastertide Sermons,p. 1.