The Apostles received message after message to assure them that He was alive and had been seen; but it was not till they had touched Him standing in their midst, and had been assured by the manifestation of His wounds, till He had with His Own voice upbraided them with their unbelief and hardness of heart, that they were fully convinced. It is indeed sad that it should have been reserved for enemies alone to recall His forgotten promise," After three days I will rise again." NOTES. 1 "Had bought" in the A.V. is misleading. It is the aorist, yópaσav, not the pluperfect. If they remained till after sunset on Friday watching by the tomb, they could have had no opportunity before this of making their purchase. Some, it is said, did prepare their spices on Friday evening, but not these. S. Luke xxiii. 56. 2 Though Christian Art has commonly represented the women as taking part in the Burial, there is no authority for it in Scripture. The men buried our Lord, the women sat over-against the sepulchre and beheld where He was laid. 3 The imperfect tense implies that it was a subject of continued talk and anxiety. 4 There is no mention of these; but as Joseph's house was close by, and it was impossible for him to do it without help, they would naturally be called. 5 Nowhere else but in Galilee could such a large body of believers be gathered together. IF there is difficulty in weaving out of the fourfold record of the trial of our Blessed Lord a consistent whole, it is largely increased, when we attempt to harmonise the different narratives of His Risen Life. The hardness of this latter task arises in the main out of the evidently fragmentary character of this portion of His Sacred History. Ten1 or more manifestations of our Lord are described, each Evangelist mentioning at least three, 2 but no two Evangelists precisely the same three. Each fragment has, so to speak, a virtue peculiarly its own, yet all together combine in impressing us with one truth. It is that Christ rose, not merely to prove that He had conquered death, but to teach men the possibilities of a higher life. Lazarus and the daughter of Jairus, and the widow's son, had risen to continue their former existence, and to die again. Jesus rose to live in His Risen Body a glorified life, and to die no more; and herein He Rom. vi. 9. has given us an earnest and pledge, not only that we shall rise again, but that we shall be "changed into 2 Cor. iii. 18. the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” S. Mark has done little more than leave the briefest allusions to four of the Appearances during the forty days. It can hardly be doubted that he was guided to make his selection for the purpose of bringing into prominence the truth upon which we spoke at the close of the last chapter. Not once only, but three times he dwells upon the reluctance of the disciples to believe the tidings of the Resurrection. When S. Peter and S. John found that Mary's fears were realised, they "went away again to their own home;" but she remained behind, struggling S. John Westcott, The Revela with an inconsolable grief, and unable to tear herself from the spot. And to her, first of all His followers, Jesus manifested Himself in His Risen Form. S. Mark gives no details of the scene; for "S. John alone was capable of recording them in their incomparably beautiful conciseness and depth." "She turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, supposing Him to be the gardener, saith unto Him, Sir, if thou have borne Him hence, tell me where thou hast laid Him, and I will take Him away." She did not recognise Him, for she was absorbed in her grief, and had no hope of the Resurrection, no thoughts but of death. "Jesus saith unto her, Mary;" and the familiar tones touched a chord of sympathy, and brought back the associations of the past. Then turning at once to satisfy herself that it was really true, she gathered the whole force of her new-found joy and conviction into the exclamation, "Rabboni," my Master!3 "She has no loftier title for Him than that which tion of the past experience had made precious; she assumes that the return to the old life exhausts the sum of her Master's victory over death;" and when she Risen Life. xvi. 7. would have clung to Him, He pointed her to the fact that, till He had ascended, she would not be able to enjoy that uninterrupted intercourse and closeness of union for which she longed. That could only be felt through the Presence of the Comforter, which depended on His return to the s. John Father. Meanwhile He had a message to send to His brethren, and she should be the bearer of it: "Say unto them, I ascend unto My Father and your Father, and My God and your God." What a shock of disappointment she must have felt, when they gave no credence to her word! Б The second manifestation of which S. Mark speaks is that to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus. One was Cleopas, the other is unnamed. They started that first Easter afternoon to go to a village a few miles distant; their hearts were filled with sadness, for they in common with so many of our Lord's disciples had experienced a dreadful disaster. They had been living in expectation that Jesus had come to restore the fallen glories of their nation, and make the name and place of Jewry once more a power in the world. But the scene on Golgotha shattered all their hopes. They had seen their expected Deliverer expire on the Cross. All the promises of the past were to them now but as Joseph. Wars, vii. 6. 6. |