CHAPTER XXI. The Resurrection Eife of Christ. "Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended." "We were not by when Jesus came, But round us far and near We see His trophies, and His name In a fair ground our lot is cast, As in the solemn week that past, While some might doubt, but all adored Ere the whole widowed Church had seen her Risen Lord." THE KEBLE. HE great truth signified by Christ's resurrection, that death to those who believe in Him is not an interruption, but an intensifying of life, not a separation from God, but an entrance into the immediate presence of the Father of spirits, has been already dwelt on. But the significance of the fact is by no means exhausted by this truth. Other raisings from the dead recorded in the Bible were restorations to the old conditions of earthly life; the resurrection of Christ was the revelation of a new life. The daughter of Jairus, the young man at Nain, and Lazarus, resumed their places, and were to their friends what they had been. Jesus re-entered the world under new and glorious conditions. During the forty days in which He was on earth, He appeared at least eleven times. Of these appearances, nine are recorded in the Gospels. The first appearance was to Mary Magdalene in the garden, Out of her seven devils had been cast, and we find her, along with the other women who crossed the illuminated track, and are still visible, following the Lord, and ministering to Him of her substance. She was last at the cross, and when all was over came to the tomb with spices to anoint Him. Returning in the dusk of the morning, she found the grave empty, and ran for the rest. Jesus spoke to her, calling her by name, "Mary." She did not know Him at first, but supposed Him to be the gardener, and asked where the dead body of her Lord had been taken, offering, weak woman though she was, to take it away herself. She then recognized Him, exclaimed "Rabboni," and moved as if to clasp His feet. He gently, but decisively, repelled her: "Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father, and to your Father; to my God and your God." He refused to be touched, not because He was unclean, nor because His new dignity repelled advance, but simply because her gesture and her word, "My Master," showed that she was looking forward to the old relations being resumed, and not to the new and more glorious conditions that were to be established. "Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended. The time is coming when the old intimacy of affection, the old unbroken companionship may be resumed; but that time is not yet. Still it is coming. This presence that you cannot have now, will be yours in the future. When I am ascended, you may cling to me. The spiritual clinging then hereafter, and the fact that my Father is your Father, and my God is your God, show that you and I will at last be together." Still it was a disappointment to her faithful love, and He gives her, of His rich mercy, a compensation, "Go, tell my brethren." She was thus made an apostle to the apostles of the fact that the Lord had risen. He appeared next to Mary Magdalene and Joanna, who came together to see the sepulchre, when He commanded them to go and tell His brethren to go into Galilee, that there they should see Him. He thus imposed on the disciples a task of some difficulty, sending them to the northern province, partly for their own sakes, partly that the witnesses to His rising might be dif fused, and the proof of His death made abundant, and partly, no doubt, because He wished to gaze again on the haunts of His childhood-His old home, the hills which He had climbed, the lake on which He had sailed, the faces on which He had looked. It was in obedience to a feeling, human, true, and manly, that He sought His childhood's home. The third appearance was probably to Simon Peter alone, and the fourth was when He joined His disciples on the way to Emmaus. Two of them, who had nothing that we know of to draw His company, save their profound grief, were journeying together, talking of the wreck and ruin which had overtaken their hopes, when suddenly He joined Himself to their company. asked what they were speaking of, and on being told, opened up to them, in all the Scriptures, the things concerning Himself. God was walking with these ignorant men, though they knew it not, and as He talked their hearts burned He within them. They come at last to the house, and He made as though He would go farther— a touch of true and refined human feeling; "the first true gentleman," says an old dramatist, "that ever breathed." He would not press Himself unasked upon their courtesy, nor even seem to do so. As if to relieve them of possible embarrassment, He made as though He would go farther, but they constrained Him, and He enters with them, and sits down to such poor fare as they were able to set before Him. The meal goes on, and in the course of it He takes and breaks the bread. Their eyes are opened, and they know Him, and He vanishes out of their sight. He had always been the head of the little family. Always when He is a guest He becomes the host, as at Cana, and now, and in the human soul, so long as His work of ingathering goes on. "If any man will open, I will enter in and sup with him, and he with me." What had not been discovered by His words, this simple act revealed -they knew Him. Possibly when He was handling the bread they saw the marks in His hands of what He had gone through, or more likely the way in which He handled the bread brought all to mind "they knew Him." Often a little |