Who availed to vivify his message?

Hanging on the cross, Christ's friends were few―

A few women whose readier instincts and affections were true and firm in the hour of deepest darkness and two of those who should have been nearest at hand―Joseph and Nicodemus, the two who had made least open profession and had even seemed most cowardly. 

All the rest fled. 

The teacher of new truth―

The preacher of a new dispensation―

Where was He? 

Dead. 

And where was His gospel? 

Dead, too, to all appearance. 

None remembered―

None heeded it or Him. 

None knew who rolled that stone from the tomb's mouth and turned death into new life. 

The same power that opened that tomb and stirred its occupant whom men thought dead and buried out of sight availed to vivify His message and to nurture it through evil and good report until it dominated the nations and became in its age a mighty engine of spiritual truth.