the most remarkable event in the history of the world. That the outline is free from objections, we do not pretend to think. The narratives on which it is founded are not without their difficulties. They are not, however, on that account the less, but rather the more credible; for well may we be assured that had they originated in fraud (were such a thing possible, which it is not), they would have been free from the objections which diversities in details might originate. But the single incident of the interview of Jesus with Mary Magdalen, is to our mind enough to prove the resurrection. That incident is no invention. It is not thus that men invent. That incident could not have insensibly grown up in the bosom of the Christian church, could we—which we cannot-suppose a Christian church without the resurrection. The incident has unmistakeable marks of reality. The words are few, but to every one who knows the human heart, they give demonstration that Jesus was alive after his crucifixion. The revealing power of the well-known name; the rapidity with which Mary's heart responds her 'Rabboni' to Christ's 'Mary;' her eagerness to embrace and worship her Lord, who now by some wonderful agency was alive before her ;-all this is so natural, it is so much what we can understand in the circumstances, yet so unlikely to have originated as an imagination, or grown up as a myth, or been invented as a fraud, that we cannot help taking it for a reality, and so giving credence to the great historical fact that Jesus rose again the third day from the dead.' One small element in this most striking and touching incident deserves a distinct notice. When Mary asks the gardener where he had laid Jesus, she does not mention Jesus' name, saying merely, 'Sir, if thou hast borne him away,' &c. How is this? Had it been the gardener, what could he have known of the nature of the inquiry? Of whom did the woman speak? Was she some poor demoniac haunting the tomb, and haunted herself by an evil spirit? No, she was a sane and a very loving woman, who spoke as she felt, never thinking for a moment that any one could fail to know who was the person of whom she spoke, and who occupied and filled her whole soul. Few of our readers will pass their lives without meeting with more instances than one, in which persons thus, in the fulness of their hearts and the absorption of their thoughts, speak of dear and valued friends. The form may appear indeterminate, but in truth it is in each case determinate and exclusive. Mary Magdalen had but one him. Again we affirm, these are not the signs of invention, whether intentional or unintentional.

The soldiers placed on guard at Jesus' tomb, overpowered with fear, sank speechless to the earth when that tomb was riven and its tenant came forth. Hastening into the city, they reported what had occurred to the priests, who, summoning a council

took the only course left, and, as they could not undo what had been done, they resolved to ascribe the disappearance of the body to the disciples. Promising the soldiers impunity and giving them a bribe, they induced them to report that while they, the guards, slept, his disciples came and stole the corpse. The falsehood obtained credit which lasted for a long time. Yet was it a manifest invention, for how could the soldiers know what took place while they were asleep? The fiction, however, involves an important admission, namely, that something extraordinary took place, that that something involved the disappearance of the body of Jesus, and that the Jews could not produce the body wherewith to contradict the statement made by the Christians, that their Master had risen and ascended into heaven. These admissions are the more important from their being implied and involuntary. They differ from the apostolic averment of the resurrection of Jesus scarcely more than in form.

Had it been worth while, the invention might have been confuted by some public appearance of Jesus. Yet it is not easy to see what public appearance could have had any effect on the minds of men who, like the priests, had rejected the strongest evidence. How was Jesus to prove himself to be himself in the eyes of an indiscriminate mass? If he appeared to a few, he must have given preference to the high-priest and his associates. But they would have been glad of an opportunity to suppress evidence which they had been so fortunate as to have consigned solely to their custody. Besides, any attempt to make a public appearance might have led to a popular tumult, in which it would have been easy for the priests to sacrifice the leading members of the hated Christian community, and thus the labours of Jesus would in a main part be frustrated. The destruction of Peter, James, and John, would then have been a heavy blow to the infant church. True, it may be that God could have provided other servants; but even when he employs the miraculous, the Almighty Father is frugal of his means, and sets in motion extraordinary influences with a sparing hand, and only as springs and impulses to the human mind, whose self-education it is his constant object to promote (Matt. xxviii. 1—15; Mark xvi. 1-11; Luke xxiv. 1-12; John xx. 1—18).

CHAPTER XIII.

JESUS APPEARS TO HIS DISCIPLES, AND AFTER FORTY DAYS ENTERS INTO THE SPIRITUAL WORLD.

April 9th to May 18th, A.D. 30.

We have already narrated two appearances made by Jesus to his disciples: I. To the women returning from the sepulchre ; II. To Mary Magdalen at the sepulchre. Other appearances are on record.

III. The reader has seen Peter again on the scene. He had denied Jesus, but he had not deserted his cause. Of his denial we may presume he had already bitterly repented, and his contrition, in union with the resurrection and consequent events, changed him into an heroic and successful herald of divine truth. For this end, it was desirable that Jesus should be seen by him after the resurrection. Jesus, having risen from the tomb, was seen by Peter, or Cephas. From Paul's testimony (1 Cor. xv. 5), which is the more valuable because between Peter and himself there at one time existed some variance (Gal. ii. 11, seq.), it appears that Jesus was seen at an early time by Peter individually, and as he was seen also by the twelve apostles, of whom Peter was one, he must have been seen by Peter twice.

IV. A fourth appearance of Jesus was made in the after-part of the first day of the week to two disciples (two of the seventy, it is supposed), who were on the road from Jerusalem to Emma'us, a village which lay about seven miles north-west of the capital. As they journeyed, these two men conversed with each other. The tenor of their conversation is valuable, as showing the prevalent state of mind in the great body of Christ's disciples. From the record it appears that they had taken Jesus for a temporal Messiah, and expected he would have redeemed Israel from the Roman yoke, the great result to which all patriotic_minds ardently looked. Now, however, all hope had fled; for Jesus had been put to death.

Such a state of mind was not one out of which even the idea of a resurrection could grow. If in any way the idea had sprung up, such a state of mind did not afford nutriment or support to it, so as to make it grow into shape and power, and at length take an outward form. Between the disappointed expectations, blighted hopes, and grieved hearts of the disciples, and his rising, his ascension, his empire as a spiritual Saviour, the Saviour of the whole world, there was no congeniality, no point of union, no means of transition, no germ, and therefore, no possible connection. Indeed, to establish a connection of the kind, Jesus himself had in his life unsuccessfully laboured; and had there now been nothing new but the cross and the grave, the

development of the idea of a Universal Teacher, the divine Word, would have been impossible.

We make these remarks, because they touch in its vital point the theory of Dr. Strauss, who in his Leben Jesu maintains that Jesus in all his higher relations and qualities-all, that is, which makes him venerable and dear to Christians-their Lord, their Saviour, their Guide, their Hope-sprang from the hearts of his first disciples, which, teeming with Jewish ideas and sympathies, gave birth to the being from whom they thought they derived their own spiritual life, power, and happiness. Had such a birth been possible, the offspring would, in being like its parent, have had Jewish features; for it is Jewish notions, fancies, and desires alone, that this theorist allows as the elements out of which the Christ of the New Testament was produced. Most strange is it that so insufficient a theory should have been deliberately put forth; for it leaves wholly unaccounted for the great matter

that which in its very nature is divine, and so demonstrates and exhibits God in Christ-namely, those higher qualities to which we have just referred the love, the gentleness, the mental power, the wisdom, yea, and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, who in these undeniable attributes clearly appears before our eyes as the Son of God, the Brother of Man, and the Light and Redeemer of the World.

While the two disciples before mentioned were pursuing their way, they were joined by a third, an unknown person. Conversing together, they drew near Emma'us, when the stranger, being pressed, became their guest. As they reclined at table, Jesus (for it was Jesus) performed the same symbolical act of breaking bread which he had done on the previous Thursday evening, in instituting the Communion of the Supper. The token was at once recognised. They knew who was before them. They believed, and solid was the reason of their faith. For this token was known only to a small body; and when they saw the same hands breaking the bread, and heard the same voice invoking the same blessing, and distributing the same object, they could not fail to have their minds carried back to the original scene, and to see in him who did these acts the Teacher and Lord that had instituted the rite in the guest-chamber in Jerusalem. After beholding this convincing proof of the existence of Jesus, they readily reverted in thought to some points in the conversation held with him on the road; for he had endeavoured to show them out of their own sacred books that the Messiah was destined to suffer what Jesus had suffered. His words made their hearts burn within them. Now, on comparing what he had just done with what a little before he had said, those hearts burst into a flame, and they themselves saw and believed; and that the more readily, because there lay at the bottom of those hearts a certain report, of which at first they could make nothing, but

which now they well understood, and which in truth actually gave the key to the whole. The report was, that some female disciples having that morning (Sunday) gone early to the tomb, had come back and reported that they found the tomb empty, and had seen angels who informed them that Jesus had risen from the dead.

Let the reader carefully mark how congruous with the history is this state of mind in these two disciples. The report made by them of what had taken place, is exactly correspondent with the facts which we have above set forth on the authority of the Evangelists. The report in substance exactly represents a state of mind such as the statements of the women were fitted to produce. These statements were at first received with incredulity. The two disciples did not believe them. Only they heard and wondered (Mark xvi. 12, 13; Luke xxiv. 13-33).

How natural is all this in honest men! Who does not see and understand the mental process through which these Jewish peasants went? Who cannot realise it, and go over it again in his own thoughts? And obvious is it that there was no haste to believe on the part of the disciples. The two who were going to Emma'us had left Jerusalem, and were on a journey, as if nothing extraordinary had taken place, as if all was in truth over, the bright vision gone, and now nothing remained but ordinary business to engage their energies. How remote is this from the possibility of there existing any plot among the Christians to steal away the body of Jesus, or to conceal him when he had in some way escaped from the bonds of the grave-how remote and alien from any dreamy state of feeling which might have engendered fancies, and fancies produced visions, and visions led to hopes, and hopes spun the web of realities, and those realities such as are recorded in the divine words and diviner deeds ascribed to Jesus in the New Testament!

V. The crucifixion created alarm in the breasts of the eleven apostles. Even the unhappy end of Judas, though it relieved them of fear from a false associate, augmented their excitement. They felt the need of concealment; they also felt impelled to commune together. To this impulse they yielded when a report of his having been seen had raised dim notions in their minds akin to hope. That shadowy feeling gained little by the conversation which ensued. On the evening of Sunday, however, the two disciples to whom Jesus had shown himself came to their secret place of resort, and reported to the assembled eleven that they had seen Christ, and been assured that it was Christ by his breaking bread before them. While these two persons were narrating the circumstances, Jesus himself appeared in the midst of them. The immediate effect was fear. The doors of their hiding-place were fastened; the appearance was sudden; it could, they thought, be nothing else than a spectre. Having saluted